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Author Topic: Economic Crisis  (Read 27636 times)

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #60 on: July 25, 2013, 04:29:37 pm »

Oh, and by the way, Slobodan, did I say they don't provide medical coverage? You assumed that. The difference and the crunch is the kind and cost of medical care demanded by Obamacare. Once you have a job again, Slobodan, under Obomacare you'll have coverage for pregnancy and also for abortion.

In the six years before the Great recession, thus before Obamacare, we (our company) have experienced annual cost of health plans going up on average 10-20 % per year, resulting in doubling of our initial cost. None of which caused us to reconsider paying it, or to close our shop.

Not sure I understand your reference to pregnancy and abortion!?

RSL

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #61 on: July 25, 2013, 04:41:53 pm »

No kidding, Slobodan. You actually believe that?
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #62 on: July 25, 2013, 04:50:34 pm »

No kidding, Slobodan. You actually believe that?

I assume that refers to the Marshall Plan? In which case, I forgot to add: and to create demand for American products and businesses.

RSL

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #63 on: July 25, 2013, 04:54:29 pm »

Bye. Can't swallow any more of that.
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Vladimirovich

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #64 on: July 26, 2013, 09:57:06 pm »

Any idea why that's true, Vlad? At the end of WW II, Russia was devastated but so was Western Europe, especially Germany.

Germany = yes, as for the rest of Western Europe - do not kid yourself, you want to compare the level of destruction or population loss in % or absolute numbers in France or in Holland (Western Europe) vs for example Belarus (Eastern Europe) ? you really need to update yourself about the facts... and why that is true ? apparently because medical insurance was provided by the gov't no less  ;D ...

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Vladimirovich

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #65 on: July 26, 2013, 09:59:52 pm »


Everybody and his mother would be a successful entrepreneur if they could treat their workers as slaves, herd them into company dormitories, wake them up at midnight with a whistle, give them a cup of tea and a biscuit and ask them to work next 14 hours on it, in unsafe factories, exposed to unsafe material. When that is not enough, hire their children, they are even cheaper. And along the way remind them that "low wage is better than no wage." While your company amasses historic, record-breaking profits and cash reserves.

sounds like mainland China in many aspects
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Ray

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #66 on: July 26, 2013, 10:52:42 pm »

sounds like mainland China in many aspects


Sounds like the history of all developed nations and the reality of all currently developing nations.

If one wishes to be ruthlessly honest about the matter, all civilizations in the past have been based upon slavery, including our own. Without the economic advantages of cheap labour, those great civilizations of ancient China, Greece and Rome could not have existed.

Likewise, without the cheap labour that China has provided during the past few decades, corporations in the developed West would not have rushed over to China to relocate their operations and manufacturing there.

Personally, I'm very disappointed that there has not been more extensive development of robots. When I was at high school over 50 years ago, I confidently predicted that in 50 years time or less, all menial, repetitive and boring tasks would be done by robots, so that most of us could devote our time to more creative tasks, such as photography, or painting, or scientific research, or helping the under-privileged, or designing ever-more sophisticated robots.

How wrong I was. Instead, it seems we're still relying upon cheap human labour in sweat shops to produce many if not most of our goods. One can't even get a decent robot vacuum cleaner.
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Alan Klein

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #67 on: July 26, 2013, 11:11:15 pm »


How wrong I was. Instead, it seems we're still relying upon cheap human labour in sweat shops to produce many if not most of our goods. One can't even get a decent robot vacuum cleaner.


Why do you want these laborers to starve?  Don't they have a right to eat too from their work as you and I do? 

dreed

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #68 on: July 26, 2013, 11:48:26 pm »

Personally, I'm very disappointed that there has not been more extensive development of robots. When I was at high school over 50 years ago, I confidently predicted that in 50 years time or less, all menial, repetitive and boring tasks would be done by robots, so that most of us could devote our time to more creative tasks, such as photography, or painting, or scientific research, or helping the under-privileged, or designing ever-more sophisticated robots.

Burger robot could revolutionize fast food industry
Robots are starting to take over fast food jobs

... but what will those people now do for a crust?
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #69 on: July 27, 2013, 12:11:17 am »

sounds like mainland China in many aspects

I was actually referring to Apple in China.

Ray

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #70 on: July 27, 2013, 12:31:33 am »

Why do you want these laborers to starve?  Don't they have a right to eat too from their work as you and I do? 

Nobody starves in a civilized country, unless he wants to. Taking care of the underprivileged and the disadvantaged is the hallmark of a civilized country. The greater productivity that results  from the use of sophisticated robots can ensure that everybody is better off, including the unemployed and the unemployable.

It's far more sensible to pay an unskilled labourer to attend a school to learn something, to learn anything, than to pay him to do boring work that can be done far more efficiently by a robot.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #71 on: July 27, 2013, 01:03:19 am »

Ray, pass whatever you are smoking, please! ;)

Ray

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #72 on: July 27, 2013, 01:46:40 am »

Slobodan,

My great clarity of insight results from a complete abstinence from smoking. ;)
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stamper

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #73 on: July 27, 2013, 03:57:42 am »

Do robots receive a wage? No wages means less money being spent. Less money being spent means less goods being bought. Less goods being bought means less workers creating the robots etc etc. What is need is more workers being employed and creating greater wealth.

32BT

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #74 on: July 27, 2013, 05:48:04 am »

Do robots receive a wage? No wages means less money being spent. Less money being spent means less goods being bought. Less goods being bought means less workers creating the robots etc etc. What is need is more workers being employed and creating greater wealth.

That should read "enough wealth", not "greater wealth" imo, because that is the core of the entire problem. Current economic models being particularly aimed at growth.

We need to find some kind of equilibrium between the number of people that earth will sustain and the amount of wealth required. Finding that equilibrium is an evolutionary process currently, which unfortunately means there will be times of abundance, times of scarcity, times of growth, and times of devastation as evolution does its thing.

If we somehow want to move beyond evolution, we need to define what "enough" wealth means, which obviously is vastly different for everyone. And that requires everyone to have some remote sense of what it means to be alive, what's important in their life, or more succinctly: what's the meaning of life?

Since the current western economic model doesn't seem to answer (or even want to answer) that question and leaves it to the greed-is-good, survival-of-the-fittest paradigm, we will have to accept that evolution is taking its course for a little while longer...
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Alan Klein

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #75 on: July 27, 2013, 06:47:40 am »

Do robots receive a wage? No wages means less money being spent. Less money being spent means less goods being bought. Less goods being bought means less workers creating the robots etc etc. What is need is more workers being employed and creating greater wealth.

You're arguing against the industrial and computer revolutions.  The fact is that "robots" and more efficient ways to be more productive provide more goods for more people at less cost.  That benefits society overall by raising everyone's standard of living creating greater wealth for more people than ever before.  

If you look at Chinese photos of decades ago you'll see hundreds of laborers constructing a single road.  Now they use road pavers and heavy mechanized machines producing more and better road for more people at less cost.  Yet China is richer today then it was then.   The IT department  in the construction management company I work for with a total of around  950 people has almost 90 technology empoloyees.  Those jobs would not exist without computers and the tech revolution.  

The bottom line is that more productivity creates greater wealth not more people working.  Jobs will follow.  Before the current recession we were out about 4% unemployment.  How could that have been since automation and other technology was at it's max at that point?  There are reasons we have less employment today.  But it doesn't have to do with technology, robots, and systems that increase productivity.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2013, 06:49:47 am by Alan Klein »
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Rob C

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Re: Economic Crisis
« Reply #76 on: July 27, 2013, 07:26:23 am »

This thread has turned into a nonsense.

Egalitarian dreams built upon relatively limited supplies of personal, hands-on running of anything.

1. People are not born equally talented.

2. Pupìls in the same school, attending the same class will achieve vastly different degrees of success, despite sitting before the same teacher. Some kids are there to learn where others to disrupt and appear cooler than thou to their equally ignorant mates. The variations can and often do exist amongst kids from the same parents. I know this, from experience. It is not based on opportunity; it is based upon individual personality.

3. Employment. People find jobs because someone else needs them to perform a function for which they are, hopefully, trained. There is huge confusion in some circles about that relationship, some thinking that the employee is the person of principal value within that context. Yes, he or she can be, depending on rôle, but more often than not can be replaced whereas the entrepreneur cannot.

4. Some are born into riches and develop them further; others simply squander and often the third generation closes the business down or loses control to outside money.

5. Supply and demand is always the factor that governs the success of something, and when that product’s time is up – heavy engineering in the UK, for example, time is up, however hard it is for those once flourishing within it. It hits huge companies and even nationalised industries every bit as much as minnows such as myself. When it creased to make sense for me to plough money into stock photography, that’s the same logic that tells a government to stop backing redundant industries. That in my case it’s a part of one family that takes the hit makes it no less real a hit; that miners and shipyard workers and their families get hit is unfortunate, but they deserve no more sympathy than do I and mine. Whether it’s one or a group, the pain is the same.

6. This thread was never intended to create bitter splits in Lula, and perhaps it hasn’t: it may have just given opportunity for the usual suspects to unwind their bloodied, crimson banners another time. Either way, I’m afraid I see no further value here on this theme.

Rob C

« Last Edit: July 27, 2013, 07:29:26 am by Rob C »
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