Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach
Your guess avoids logic and real world developments of the last 50 years. I don't "like" mine, it's just what is going to happen.
My guess really doesn't. If the cost is equal, and you say it's getting there, then there exists a ton of incentives to avoid the incredible, daily hassle of dealing with low skilled employees, taxes, unemployment, calling in sick, failing to show, etc. I don't think the cost difference is the barrier - it's whether the machines can do the job as well as humans and whether people accept them. There are self checkout places in stores with wages FAR above minimum wage. If McD finds that people accept robots or automated kiosks, they'll replace workers whether they're paid $8 an hour or $15. As someone pointed out, in Europe they're getting $15. Why haven't they all been replaced by machines? At any rate, it's an objective question and you've cited no data or evidence, same as me.
It appears the answer is yes in some cases. They don't seem to be helping. That isn't saying that there aren't the possibility of better programs that the money would be better spent on, however, just that the programs of the last 40 years have been abysmally inept.
Can you cite any study, treatise, discussion, or are we just supposed to take your word for it?
Mandatory spending between 1993 and 2013 outpaced inflation by more than a factor of three (Inflation was 61%, Mandatory spending rose 200%), and poverty rates didn't change. Surely you don't see this as a success?
That's mostly Medicare and SS, and the poverty rates of old people DID change. Look at the graph.
Yes they are, because when we are discussing JOBS you try to change the subject to a subject that is pretty much the OPPOSITE of jobs.
I wasn't just discussing jobs. You jumped in to a thread and want to determine what's an appropriate topic, which is what YOU want to talk about, after the fact.
Me: "Unskilled workers jobs are threatened by innovation, Does the government owe them anything?"
You: "BLAAARG!! YOU WANT KILL WELFARE AND CHILDREN!!!"
It wasn't me who said the only role for government was to "modernize" the workforce. If you wanted to say, "modernize the workforce, expand EITC, etc." then you should have said it instead of assuming we'd all understand you.
Yes, you intentionally inferred a comment about welfare from a comment I said that had nothing to do with welfare. It isn't a matter of "parsing for weasel words", it's a matter of you learning how to read in general without dumping a truck load of your own garbage on what the other person wrote.
Again, if you want to jump into a discussion, you can't then make the rules about what is appropriate to discuss.
When have we actually had a situation that matches this free trade and modernization? Jobs are going off shore because it is cheaper, companies are leaving because taxes are lower. You and every other nanny-state promoter ignore the simple fact that it is DEMOCRAT policies that are driving jobs over seas and driving companies to countries with lower taxes.
You also ignore the reason why so many jobs ended up going to China, and the US lost it's edge over Japan in the automotive and technology markets: US Protectionism created s**ty products in the 70s and 80s.
One reason jobs are going overseas are the subsistence wages and lack of safety rules, work rules, so they're poisoning workers and the population, which DOES make it cheaper to make stuff. Look up a picture of China - I've been there, and there were clear days you can't see a quarter mile because of the smog. Kills perhaps 500,000 Chinese per year. It's a big advantage, not to mention the explicit and implicit Chinese subsidies in general, such as them holding down their currency to make their goods cheaper and more.
FWIW, I agree and have said we might as well subsidize the hell out of our manufacturers. It would make the playing field somewhat level. Lower the tax rate to zero for all I care - just tax wages and dividends and capital gains. The big boys already pay voluntary U.S. taxes on overseas profits. I'd rather domestic producers face the same option.
And the manufacturing jobs lost over seas were replaced with a booming services market in IT and contruction. Your way of processing information seems to rely heavily on zero sum logic... sprinkled with a healthy dose of the bigotry of low expectations for low income workers.
No they weren't, except for construction, in a BUBBLE. You're not really saying that's an equivalent trade off are you?
And I'm just looking at data. I've driven around lots of Tennessee towns that used to thrive and are now empty shells, and I see the wage data for the working class and it's declining or at best stagnant. If you have any data to present to make your case, do so. I've looked for years to find the evidence "free trade" works and just haven't seen it. But I'm open to learning new things. You got anything but you saying it's true?
Note that the only decline in the poverty rate in that 40 year span has been in the retirement population, poverty in working age families has increased, and in the end it is a wash with no net change in the national poverty rate.
OK, and..... You had a ramp up in poverty spending and showed big drops in the poverty rate. Since then from what I've read most of the growth is in healthcare, which is consistent with growth in healthcare costs for everyone, and spending on other programs has been more or less similar, with small increases. So what should happen to the poverty rate given real wages for the bottom 20% have declined since the 1970s?