Politics

[Tanks]

It is interesting that people will wear fancy watches and suits and pair it with a frayed belt.

 

[DillonG]

It's not so much a population issue, as it is depleting natural resources, overcrowding, and the availability of the goods that we have today.
Something that, may, or, may not happen? It will be long after my demise.

I don’t see natural resource depletion becoming an issue. That theory was proposed years before my time. It never happened. Perhaps water will be an issue when the sun expands and boils the oceans. That will not be my concern.

 

[DillonG]

It is interesting that people will wear fancy watches and suits and pair it with a frayed belt.

View attachment 640981

Tanks, why do you have to harp on my belt!?!

 

[DillonG]

Why is there a political discussion here? I visit sights like this to escape politics, not wallow in them.

Stop looking at this thread. Just a suggestion.

 

[deewayne2003]

Most of those had been here for decades. My housekeeper has been working for me since 1994, she and her family were some of those people. Her sister and BIL own a very successful machine shop. She owns her home and drove a nicer car than I did until recently. Her daughter is a dental hygienist and son is an attorney. These are much more productive members of society than hell of a lot of native-born citizens that live on various government subsidies.

Congratulations to your house keeper and her successful family, however their ability to prosper doesn't discount the fact that it has come at the cost of opportunity to American citizens - Just like NAFTA it financially lifted millions or even billions of 3rd world people, but at the cost of American manufacturing jobs.

In retort I will offer my experience with Umberto in the Texas construction industry.

Umberto's mother and father were also given amnesty by Reagan, his father was a skilled bulldozer operator and taught his son the ropes, which Umberto took full advantage of and became a superintendent at the company we both worked for.

Umberto's family had amassed over a dozen rental homes in Frisco Texas and in Mexico they had several houses, 2 gas stations and a cattle ranch that was big enough to have a full time staff of 10.

Hard work right?.... Yes they worked very hard, having their family south of the border get illegals across the border where they were transported to the DFW area and kept in the rental houses that Umberto owned. Each of these men would work under Umberto with fake social security numbers and ID.

I know of one 3 bedroom house in Frisco that he had at least 8 men living in and charging them $300mo per person + he charged them $10day in meals..... So that one house netted him $5K TAX FREE CASH per month off of just 1 house + he also skimmed 10% of their pay with the help of another immigrant that owned a check cashing store.

They had their system down so tight that they even had a collection of LONE STAR CARDS(Texas version of EBT/SNAP/Food stamps) that they would buy all the food with and a separate squad of illegal women that would do the shopping, cooking and cleaning of these homes as well as making the rounds for the house cleaning company that Umberto's mother ran.

Feds say North Texas company continued hiring undocumented workers after being caught

A Plano excavation company is being investigated by federal authorities for continuing to employ undocumented immigrants even after previously being caught...

www.dallasnews.com

ICE Actions Against Companies Harboring Undocumented Workers - HRProfessionalsMagazine

By Bruce E. Buchanan In the past 6 months, owners of companies, who re-hired undocumented workers after an Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) audit of its I-9 forms, have faced federal indictment or criminal forfeiture of assets for their unlawful actions. The common theme in these...

hrprofessionalsmagazine.com

Bottom line, we need immigration laws enforced both at the border and at the employer level.

 

[Hunt anything]

Most of those had been here for decades. My housekeeper has been working for me since 1994, she and her family were some of those people. Her sister and BIL own a very successful machine shop. She owns her home and drove a nicer car than I did until recently. Her daughter is a dental hygienist and son is an attorney. These are much more productive members of society than hell of a lot of native-born citizens that live on various government subsidies.

Reagan was also duped by the democrats in congress, he agreed to the amnesty in exchange for clamping down on the border. The dems reneged.
That’s how I remember it but that was a lot of blows to the head ago.

 

[Red Leg]

A good guy post. One of the tens of thousands who are helping.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1846732394554183854

He is in fact a really good guy - friends and colleagues for 25 years. That is his personal bird and he flew it down there just a month after having both hips replaced. Ridiculous in this country that a 73 year old aviator is flying in supplies and “hoping” to get enough in before the real cold arrives.

 

[rookhawk]

I agree that businesses have no choice, but I think this argument ignores one point.

A person has two 'jobs' in an economy. Creating 'stuff', and consuming 'stuff'. Basic supply and demand. It doesn't matter how cheap or high quality a good or service is if there isn't a customer base with the interest and resources to take advantage of it.

Automation essentially focuses on removing people from the 'creating stuff' process. Remove people, add machines.

But, machines don't fulfill the other essential part of the equation. Machines don't 'consume stuff'.

It also seems to ignore the other key point, that if people can't 'create stuff', they may want to consume 'stuff', but no longer have the resources (wages) required to do so. At that point, they can demand whatever quality at whatever price they like, but they can't afford those goods, so they're no longer part of the economic system.

In the context of a single business, a single sector even, this is fine. Cheaper goods for everyone, not so much job loss that the overall customer base is hurt to any great degree and hey, maybe making it cheaper opens up a new (poorer) consumer base, like happened with the car, or air travel, or personal computers, or clothes, or fancy foods. Knock a dollar off COGS in exchange for losing 10,000 potential consumers (the employees you laid off to achieve the saving) and you're way, way in the black as a large company. Hence why it is in the interest of the consumer and the shareholders for a single business, planning independently, to take advantage of automation to as great a degree as possible.

But if it's across every company, or a lot of companies in a lot of industries to the point that the customer base IS significantly reduced, you have a problem. Knocking a dollar off COGS in exchange for losing 10 MILLION consumers who no longer have an income to buy your stuff, and your benefits are marginal. If it's 100 MILLION consumers in that position, you go bankrupt.

If (as I believe), we are in a period of job destruction through automation (at least in the West), not an era of job creation through automation, then the 'consuming stuff' element of the economy becomes increasingly important, and increasingly problematic. Effectively, the value of an individual in economic terms is increasingly weighted to their potential as a consumer, not a worker.

Something will need to be done about it. This might be simply producing 'stuff' efficiently to sell overseas at a price that opens up that market in exchange for a reduced living standards domestically. It might be producing 'stuff' cheaply enough that government support alone enables its purchase. We could simply let wages plummet as the availability of jobs drops and hope that goods drop in price quickly enough to approximate the same living standards in the US (whilst the 3rd world enjoys the actual benefits in increased living standards). Or we could directly recognize (financially) the essential value of 'the consumer' to economic success through the introduction of a universal basic income. All are options, and the one selected will depend on policy. But something will need to be done.

I don't have any good answers here, and those that I can think of fly in the face of a lot of my own opinions on free market economics. I think this is a difficult conundrum. But to simply ignore that fundamental issue is not a solution.

All this is predicated on being primarily a consumer. Your statements are not at all unusual, but they are sort of telling that we're indoctrinated to be consumers.

What's my credit score? 850, don't care, won't ever use it again.
What's my best interest rate attainable? Don't care, don't want to borrow money.
What do I need to consume? Not much, fuel, food, energy, a few odds and ends.

I wasted 30 years of my life thinking like a consumer and being poorer than I should have been because I was a consumer. Had I bought more assets and less depreciable goods, I would have been quite wealthy by now. Cash is king. Buying things that go up in value rather than things that are consumed is the focus.

If there is one thing my kids and any kid I meet hears, its that debt is the noose that strangles you. It forces you to be a consumer minded cog in a machine, a salary man as the Japanese call it.

Automation and efficiencies don't really have the impact on the cash-rich value-enhancer, they just screw the consumer and the salary man. Any kid with some reasonable guidance and a distaste for debt can be a millionaire by 30 if they do not consume, only produce. It's just that we don't teach children (or adults) how to avoid consumerism whatsoever.

Probably the best example of the above is Warren Buffet, who lives in his "sh7tty" little house and drives his "crappy old car" and occasionally eats a "mediocre hotdog" from Dairy Queen. He focused on creating value and providing goods and services to consumers while not being a consumer.

 

[Tanks]

If (as I believe), we are in a period of job destruction through automation (at least in the West), not an era of job creation through automation, then the 'consuming stuff' element of the economy becomes increasingly important, and increasingly problematic. Effectively, the value of an individual in economic terms is increasingly weighted to their potential as a consumer, not a worker.

We are destroying mostly low skilled jobs and also some jobs that could never have been done by humans (silicone wafers etc.), obviously a computer chip with billions of transistors could never be done by a human (Apple's M1 chip has 114B). Automation allows us to improve technology.

Results of this automation do get consumed. Humans will need to get educated and move/improve with the times. The days of paying an auto worker XXX dollars per hour to install windshields are gone.

 

[Kevin Peacocke]

With Sinwar's elimination there is an opportunity to bring an end to the war in Gaza. What I find hard to believe is that he was casually wandering around without his shield of hostages, to be chanced upon by an Israeli patrol. Makes no sense. It wouldn't surprise me if his own gave him up for a reward, or just to get him out of the way so they can negotiate.