American Politics

[Sabretooth78 808]

16 hours ago, raynev1 said:

@A Nonny Moose Yeah , and you see who is on top of the list of complainers . They are so stuck in their ways here in West Virginia . They have their heads stuck up each other's butt so bad , they just can't get right . The damned old dollar means more than trying to clean things up a bit . Not just air quality , but water quality as well . I could show you some horribly disgusting places here that you would be sick at the sight of how they do things .This coal mining has killed many waterways very close to where I live here in West Virginia , far worse than the chemical companies did where I grew up in Maryland . They even spread coal ash all over our roadways in the winter and call it traction control . It's more like let's make people sick and stupid control . Lead , mercury , arsenic and all kinds of other nasty stuff is in that coal ash . Just what you want to track into your house and let your children crawl around in . I thought hazardous waste was to be disposed of in lined landfills . Not here , that cost too much . As the snow melts this stuff runs down the streets as a black slurry releasing rainbows on top . It really bothers me , that nobody here cares about what goes into our waterways and what we have to breath in .

Sorry for the wall of words , the stuff just bothers me . You should have posted this in "The Environment Thread" It may get out to more people that give a care . We all know American Politics is bogus anyway .

And when the coal industry is gone (which some day it will be) guess who will be paying for that cleanup?

The costs of cleanup and environmental mitigation (which are just as real and important as the costs of production and manufacture) have come a long way towards being accounted for in these sorts of things but we have a long way to go.  I drive by a good example of it every day, the former Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna, NY (at one time the world's largest steel mill).  They eventually closed up shop - to no small extent due to the tax policies of the city; and they've been blaming everything bad that has happened in that corrupt dump of a municipality for the past 30 years on it - and now we're left with a hopelessly contaminated wasteland in a prime lakefront location that will cost billions to ever see any hope of economic use again.  The only use it sees now is a small portion of the site is used as a wind farm - probably as productive a use as can be had.  Seems to me that in a ideal situation those [very real] costs should have been included into the price of each piece of steel that left that mill.

We've been living on the cheap with all these things for all this time but in the end all it amounts to is a government subsidy and once it's gone you have to adjust to the [new] reality - not to mention pay for the mistakes of the past all at the same time.  Which I suppose is bound to happen, s**t happens, but where we really prove our stupidity is when we just keep making those same mistakes over and over again.

[hym 358]

8 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

I seriously doubt all coal will be left in the ground.  Coke, a coal product, is needed by the steel industry to supply the carbon for steel.  Coke is made by blowing steam across hot coal when the lighter carbon compounds are changed into 'producer gas' which is mostly methane and hydrogen.  Producer gas is perfectly good natural gas, and can be used the same way for the same purpose.  The end ash is coke for the steel mills.  There could be other coal-tar products that then go to the petrochemical boys for further processing as well.  The trick is to stop burning the stuff and dumping the result directly into the atmosphere.

As long as iron is mined, steel will be made.  Iron doesn't have the properties needed as a really good building material.  Making steel requires large quantities of coke (carbon) as do several other processes including making abrasives and other refractories.  Coal isn't in any danger except as a direct fuel.  The coal companies and the politicians need to look past their noses.

There was a time when the US had a thriving sulfur mining industry. Today, that industry is a mere fraction of the size that it used to be. What killed it? The oil & gas industry. As US gasoline consumption increased, so did the demand for petroleum. Petroleum contains sulfur, and that sulfur has to be removed as part of the refining process. This left refiners with literal piles of waste sulfur that they needed to dispose of in order to keep producing refined oil products.  Enterprising individuals realized an opportunity existed; the oil & gas industry was sitting on a waste product that it would be thrilled to stop paying to dispose of, and sulfur users had a new source of high quality sulfur that could replace the sulfur they were buying from the sulfur mining industry. Thus the sulfur industry was reborn with the oil & gas industry as the only player that mattered, and the mining interests (and associated jobs) all but totally gone.

If you're a coal company and you're familiar with mining industry history, you realize you're sitting exactly where the sulfur miners found themselves decades ago. The oil & gas industry has something known as petroleum coke. Like reclaimed sulfur, it is highly pure and it can be used in almost any application that the mined product can be used in.  Like reclaimed sulfur, the oil & gas industry considers it a waste product that it would be happy to stop paying to  be rid of, and it is sitting on literal piles of the stuff. All it would take is a carbon tax that hits coal but not petroleum coke, or national coal production limits, and it would be a repeat of the sulfur industry from years ago.  It's not far-fetched to think that something like this is coming in the future as we are already discussing similar proposals today.

1 hour ago, LexusInfernus said:

Thats circular logic. People don't want to invest in solar power because they are afraid that its not a cost competitive, and because they don't invest in it the technology develops much slower and indeed won't get cost competitive. 

But while the US sticks to their old, tired polluting coal industry because damn the consequences of continuing to stick with coal, China is rapidly investing in solar power and for the first time did not increase its use of coal. China will reap the benefits from this, perhaps not on the short term, but on the long term definitely. Early adopters always benefit more than the late adopters.

The US can wait till China and Europe have developed solar energy into a naturally economically viable alternative, ensuring the US will not get any early adopter benefits and basically making them late for the party, or the government can decide to speed things up a bit, make clean alternative energy sources more attractive to invest (and therefor causing them to increase in efficiency) in and reap the benefits. The Obama administration and the end coal use advocates chose to go for the latter, but shortsighted as always, established industrial interests tried to prevent that. 

1) That is the way adoption of new technology often works. It is extremely common for new, sometimes superior, technology to fail to gain any traction simply because it isn't cost competitive with the established technology and it isn't cost competitive because it isn't established. It is a totally normal, everyday thing. The difference is that advocates have successfully lobbied governments around the world that wind and solar are special technologies that warrant government intervention to ensure they are adopted.

This isn't circular logic. It's one of the basic realities of many engineering economics problems. The most prudent course of action is often to not act at all, especially if it means you don't bear the development costs associated with being an early adopter.

2) Both historically and in modern times, the US and Europe are testament against the "early adopter benefits" argument. Most people are familiar with the fact that the US and Europe operate on different mains voltages. This isn't because the Europeans decided they wanted to be ornery. Europe lagged the US in electrification by a long enough time frame that electric technology advanced to support a higher mains voltage. As such, decades later, Europeans enjoy a more cost efficient electric grid than Americans do, simply because Europe didn't win the race.

Shifting gears, Japan has the fairly unique problem of being a densely populated country with a high electric demand and no land for the associated infrastructure. As such, Japan has become a world leader in gas insulated switchgear. Europe, facing similar pressures, has also adopted the technology. The US, by comparison, has just about totally ignored the technology until this century. As such, the US lags the rest of the world on GIS adoption, but the US leads the world in terms of reliability and cost efficiency of its GIS installations. (By ignoring the technology, the US effectively forced the Japanese and Europeans to bear the cost of development while the US gets to enjoy the benefits without paying for them.)

Jumping forward into the future, Denmark's misadventures in renewables will likely force it to become a leader in islanding operations, while the continent begins the arduous process of constructing a new transmission backbone to prevent Denmark's issues from becoming the new European model of electric mismanagement. Meanwhile, thanks to spacial considerations and a comparatively relaxed deployment schedule, the US is free to further refine island operations technology beyond what Denmark expects to achieve.  Should US and Japanese research to create a new generation dispatch solution prove successful, the US will be positioned to leapfrog generations ahead of the rest of the world.

In short, "early adopter benefits" do not necessarily function like one might tend to believe they would. Just as one can get an advantage by being the first to adopt new technology, one can also find early adoption to be an albatross that hangs on your neck for more than a century into the future. By contrast, waiting to adopt technology can save you significant costs and headaches down the road.

3) I think a more probable reality is that the Obama administration is pursuing whatever agendas that will reflect well on Obama's legacy, while "ban coal" advocates are doing what single issue advocates tend to do, namely push for some desired action without regard for the larger ramifications of that action.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Pollution taxes should apply to all economic activity done by citizens and residents of the country with said taxes and charge rates proportional to the environmental damage by the pollutants. It makes no sense to tax coal but not petroleum, though it might charge coal more for polluting more. Livestock should also be taxed for greenhouse gases and improperly disposed manure. Taxes are legal and common while there are more than enough economists, environmentalists, chemists, and climate scientists to figure out the exact tax rate for each pollutant. There are likely published and peer reviewed articles already. I don't see why corporations would oppose decreased income taxes in favor for pollution taxes without hard limits.

[LexusInfernus 908]

10 hours ago, hym said:

1) That is the way adoption of new technology often works. It is extremely common for new, sometimes superior, technology to fail to gain any traction simply because it isn't cost competitive with the established technology and it isn't cost competitive because it isn't established. It is a totally normal, everyday thing. The difference is that advocates have successfully lobbied governments around the world that wind and solar are special technologies that warrant government intervention to ensure they are adopted.

Well, wind and solar technology is special because there are certain advantages to them that are required to deal with another pressing problem, namely global warming. It is ridiculous to just wait with adopting this new technology just because it costs money. Dealing with the consequences of global rising temperatures is going to cost a lot more money, and that cost keeps increasing the longer we wait. 

Besides, its not like the coal, oil and gas industry hasn't lobbied the government for all kinds of special favors that make them more cost competitive than the alternatives. Relaxed rules on environmental protection just for them, buying of health and safety inspectors or ensuring that the agency responsible for that is severely understaffed and underfunded, etc. If the existing environmental standards were applied stringently and without exceptions on these polluting industries, and they would be taxed for the negative externalties that they produce, they wouldn't be that cost effective either. 

10 hours ago, hym said:

This isn't circular logic. It's one of the basic realities of many engineering economics problems. The most prudent course of action is often to not act at all, especially if it means you don't bear the development costs associated with being an early adopter.

If that was the case, technology would have never developed at this rate because no one wants to be the early adopter. Everyone would have been waiting for someone else to develop the tech first. This is not the case however. Being an early adopter costs money, sure, but it also comes with massive long term advantages. History has proven this over and over again. The companies that claimed that computers would never be a thing and people would always need typing machines are dead and forgotten, except the one that went all in on computers. Waiting means giving the initiative and leadership in a particular field to the competition, aka economic suicide. The United States has over the past century gained huge advantages because they were early adopters of all kinds of new technology. Silicon valley exists only because the US went all in on the computer and internet industry right from the start. Thats an entire sector of industry literally dominated by America. Sure, competition is slowly starting to form in other places, but they have to combat the deeply entrenched American dominance in the field. 

What would have happened if the US had said 'meh, that internet, far to costly to span cables to every household, we'll wait until someone else has developed it long enough that its cheaper'? And then Europe had said 'internet, that sounds great, lets do it!'. Silicon valley wouldn't be in California, it be somewhere in Europe. Google would be German, Amazon would be British, Facebook would be Dutch, and everyone with a good idea for an app would move to Europe and all the venture capitalists would have their offices located here.   

10 hours ago, hym said:

2) Both historically and in modern times, the US and Europe are testament against the "early adopter benefits" argument. Most people are familiar with the fact that the US and Europe operate on different mains voltages. This isn't because the Europeans decided they wanted to be ornery. Europe lagged the US in electrification by a long enough time frame that electric technology advanced to support a higher mains voltage. As such, decades later, Europeans enjoy a more cost efficient electric grid than Americans do, simply because Europe didn't win the race.

That is ignoring the fact that having electricity first meant a huge leap industrialization and coming up with consumer applications for electricity. Does the disadvantage of having a less efficient electric grid weigh up against possibilities that were made possible only because of the US got electricity first? And the problem here is that we are talking about fairly inflexible infrastructure. Electricity is a bit of an all or nothing situation. Either everyone has the same type of grid, or it doesn't work, which makes improvements on it more difficult once its established. That doesn't apply to solar and wind technology as improved versions of solar panels or windmills can easily exist next to the older generation of solar panels or windmills. Going for wind and solar energy does not mean that if you get stuck with the earlier models it becomes difficult or even impossible to also use the more developed later models. At the same time, going for it right from the start does mean the companies that make them are located in the US and technological developments are made in the US. By waiting all you'll get is technology developed in Europe or China, and you'll be buying it from them. Europe and China will benefit, they get the money, America just gets a consumer product. 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

A great deal of the pollution generated by H. Sap. is caused by the demand for electricity.  Wind and Solar power basic energy is free, the problem is the cost to capture it.  Those huge wind towers are anything but cheap, yet in Ontario we keep on putting them up with a goal of eliminating fossil fuelled electric generators.  This government policy isn't likely to change even if we chuck the current provincial Liberals out to replace them with the provincial Conservatives (who look a lot like the federal Liberals).

With climate change affecting us in the frozen north perhaps more than many, we are paying closer attention.  One thing that is happening is that the Arctic may soon be relatively ice-free.  Lots of excitement over the northwest passage.  Panama?  Do we really need the upgraded canal?

It is rather good that the collapse of oil prices has shut down some of the oil exploration in the Arctic.  A big spill up there could wreck things for centuries.

So, maybe U.S. coal producers are in serious danger of being reduced to an afterthought.  The party just can't last forever.  What's good for General Bullmoose isn't always good for the country.

[krbe 193]

2 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

What would have happened if the US had said 'meh, that internet, far to costly to span cables to every household, we'll wait until someone else has developed it long enough that its cheaper'? And then Europe had said 'internet, that sounds great, lets do it!'. Silicon valley wouldn't be in California, it be somewhere in Europe. Google would be German, Amazon would be British, Facebook would be Dutch, and everyone with a good idea for an app would move to Europe and all the venture capitalists would have their offices located here.   

The fact that Silicon Valley is in San Fransisco has to do with all the other factors you won't find in Germany, Britain or the Netherlands. It just so happened that this one place in America managed to assemble money, talent, technology and government will in this one place; something that could have happened in Europe, but won't because we're far too scared of either accepting the next disruptive technology or too weak-willed to push ahead. If you look around in your local corporate history there are probably several success stories from the 80s and early 90s that you've never heard of, and quite a few Europeans that got on the first plane to SF.

That being said: What good has Silicon Valley been for the average American and the average American business? Those guys still carry cheque books, and there are fifty different states panting behind Estonia when it comes to government use of the internet. And all those people still doing stuff (yes, Hym, I am aware that your wage structure differs too, and in some respects you should be very happy for that).

Early adopter benefits? Parts of Asia and Eastern Europe are decades ahead of the United States. And in Africa M-PESA have enabled mobile payments for many years already, and we're just starting in Europe!

As for Denmark and renewable energy, very good point. We're stuck with a crap system for the next few decades. Lucklily we already pay so much in taxes we won't feel that burden. Most people would probably just be proud that they got to waste their money on something that has brought untold riches to the planet...

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Hey, let's not forget that the Internet is the direct descendent of DARPAnet => ARPAnet, developed on the east coast by the U.S. DOD using the (unlimited?) defense budget, will ye, nil ye.  I had an account on that network long before the PC even existed.

The world wide web was a brainstorm, but it was an idea whose time had come.  It was time for the global village, and look what we got!?

 

[Duke87 1,070]

Another important factor with regards to deployment of renewable energy is that as things stand the US has less economic incentive to do so than Europe or China do.

China is still in the process of becoming industrialized, and their electric infrastructure is still a work in progress. When you have nothing and need to choose between investing in renewables or fossil fuels to have something, it's easy to choose renewables not even so much for environmental reasons but simply for greater ease of deployment in places where existing infrastructure is lacking. You can use solar power with or without a nearby utility line available to tap into.

Europe has energy that is consistently more expensive than it is in the US, so a quicker adoption of renewables is attractive because even without government incentives the lack of need for fuel makes installations pay for themselves faster.

The US, meanwhile, has a mature power grid with relatively cheap energy. This means the ability of renewable power to operate off grid is not particularly relevant to us except in niche circumstances, and the cost savings associated with not needing to provide fuel are not that great. We're not being aggressive at adopting the technology because we have no need to, for the time being. 
It's worth noting that some of the places in the country that have the most wind and solar per capita are places in the country where electricity is the most expensive. This is not a coincidence.

 

Would we benefit in the long term if we were more aggressive? Perhaps, but it's difficult to say. It would certainly cost us in the short term, though.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Ehh yes and no. For one, the fossil fuel industry is heavily subsidized in the US. Not so much with actual subsidies, but with all kinds of other incentives that lower the cost of operating. I think that stricter adherence to even existing environmental regulations and the closing of loopholes would create more of a burden for the fossil fuel industry. Also, this is why the government tried to create more costs for the industry, so there would be more of an incentive to switch to sustainable alternatives. 

Yes, its gonna cost money. But it will help combat global warming, it will keep the air breathable, and if you live next to a fracking installation I'm pretty sure you're gonna be glad if they stop with it because that stuff is incredibly damaging to the environment. Also, the US has never had a problem spending billions of dollars on the most things. American elections cost millions of dollars, the military costs billions. Is spending money on something good for a change really such a problem? Especially if spending that money now means spending less money on dealing with the long term effects of environmental degradation? 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

There is a problem with the North American grid.  It has no backup.

Renewable sources are much harder to block, and can form local nets to hold things together.  We only have to look at the past couple of grid outages that were caused by minor glitches and faint hearts to realize just how vulnerable the general grid is.  It needs to be "Balkanized" into nice, viable compartments, and big generating plants don't necessarily fit into this idea.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The crisis of US governability

by Nick Bryant, BBC New York Correspondent.

Definitely some points here to ponder.  Can the general greed and partisanship ever become the body of advise and consent again?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Closing Gitmo.

Obama makes some good arguments.  This is one of the knee-jerk blots on the U.S. judiciary system that is both expensive and embarrassing.  Is it true that some prisoners are held there without charge or due process?  Does Habeas Corpus not apply?  Oubliettes went out with Magna Carta.

The congressmen who don't want to think about it are displaying a quality that in the vernacular would be a reference to chicken dung.

[Duke87 1,070]

Seems to me this would be a largely symbolic move. Closing Gitmo and relocating the prisoners elsewhere would do nothing to change the fact that we're holding a bunch of people in captivity indefinitely without giving them any sort of trial. That, more than Gitmo's existence, is the real problem here.

Of course, the awkwardness over jurisdiction is an obstacle. The people held there are foreign nationals who were captured on foreign soil,  never formally extradited by the government of the country where they were captured, and never committed any crimes on US soil. The US thus has no authority to subject them to our civilian criminal justice system. They are, in effect, prisoners of war, except that they are civilians engaged in guerilla tactics rather than members of a foreign army, which makes holding them as prisoners of war problematic and makes subjecting them to military tribunal problematic as well.

I suppose shipping them of to the ICC in Den Haag to decide what to do with them might be one option that resolves the indefinite imprisonment problem, but that only works if there is sufficient evidence available to convict them of war crimes. Presumably, for many of the prisoners, the bulk of the evidence against them is classified intel that the US isn't going to reveal in any public trial.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Are those the ones that are actually guilty of something, and not just a bunch of poor sobs who were mistakenly held for terrorists? 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

^ Only the U.S. Military and the spooks know, and they are in CYA mode.  There was a lot of stupidity on display right after 9/11, and now those chicks have come home to roost.  Medieval tactics and imprisonment without due process.  Have these people no conscience?

[Meg 368]

An interesting read:    Which of the 11 American Nations Do You Live In?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

7 hours ago, Meg said:

An interesting read:    Which of the 11 American Nations Do You Live In?

This is not the first time someone has tackled this idea.  I remember a book titled The Nine Nations of North America published a couple of decades or more ago.  Don't recall the author.  The divisions are only a little finer than the previous work.

Much more interesting to me is the Treaty of Ghent which put things back ante bellum after the War of 1812.  I always feel sorry for Tecumseh and the indigenous people who got screwed out of their territory by simply being ignored.  For supporting the British side in the war, including taking Fort Detroit without a fight, he got exactly zip.  This is one of the abuses of the Crown's Colonial Office.  They were very good at only seeing as far as the water surrounding Great Britain.  These idiots were the real cause of the U.S. War of Independence and you gave them the bloody nose they deserved.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Obama nominates Garland.

And the Republicans say they will block it out of sheer partisan stupidity.  They'd probably block God if Obama nominated Him.

The courts, and especially the Supreme court should be above politics.  Political slants on judicial decisions are just asking for more litigious practice in a country that spends too much on lawyers as it stands.

I, for one, find it a gross mistake to elect any part of the judicial system.  This system needs to be non-partisan and standing beside the political life of the country.  It needs to be chosen by merit only.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Flint water problem and finger pointing while people continue to be poisoned.

This kind of bureaucratic screw up is the kind of thing the EPA is supposed to prevent.  Someone was asleep at the switch and the Michigan state staff apparently lied to the governor in some kind of 'cover your ass' moves. 

Lead poisoning both from lead pipes and wine sweetened with sugar of lead (lead acetate) destroyed the Roman Empire.  People who ignore history are bound to repeat it.

[Sabretooth78 808]

"...good to have a little sip of this, the water, I assume, is still safe to drink in New York huh?  Actually, I gotta be fair with you; I’m only setting you up a little bit. It’s just... it’s not a trick question but it’s just a set-up cause I don’t really care about the water, to tell you the truth, I just love to hear the answer to that question. I ask that question everywhere I go. Everywhere I go, I say: 'How’s the water?'  Haven’t got a positive answer yet - not one. Last year, I was in 40 states, 100 cities. Not one audience was able to say to me: 'Yes, enjoy some of our fine local water! It is pure and it is good!' Of course, I know a lot of people don’t talk that way anymore but nobody trusts the local water supply. Nobody! And that amuses me, I like that, I admit I’m a bit perverted but it amuses me that no one can really trust the water anymore and the thing I like about it the most is: it means the system is beginning to collapse and everything is slowly breaking down." - Guess Who

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Besides the occasional bureaucratic bungle that justifies public angst, and the general failure to maintain the systems, the bottled water and filter outfits are doing a real job on the public water system.  We had an incident here in Canada a few years ago that caused rules to be considerably tightened up.

North American infrastructure (water, sewage, garbage disposal, roads & bridges) gets short shrift if some administrator has some other pet project to fund.  This is backwards.

[Delta 88 262]

On 3/18/2016 at 5:44 AM, Sabretooth78 said:

"...good to have a little sip of this, the water, I assume, is still safe to drink in New York huh?  Actually, I gotta be fair with you; I’m only setting you up a little bit. It’s just... it’s not a trick question but it’s just a set-up cause I don’t really care about the water, to tell you the truth, I just love to hear the answer to that question. I ask that question everywhere I go. Everywhere I go, I say: 'How’s the water?'  Haven’t got a positive answer yet - not one. Last year, I was in 40 states, 100 cities. Not one audience was able to say to me: 'Yes, enjoy some of our fine local water! It is pure and it is good!' Of course, I know a lot of people don’t talk that way anymore but nobody trusts the local water supply. Nobody! And that amuses me, I like that, I admit I’m a bit perverted but it amuses me that no one can really trust the water anymore and the thing I like about it the most is: it means the system is beginning to collapse and everything is slowly breaking down." - Guess Who

And that was from his 1990 (or 1992) HBO special. Man I wish he were still alive today, I'd love to hear what he thinks about all of the stupid things going on in the world right now  The world could use his wise words.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

California just approved the Unemployment for Unskilled Citizens Act today with a whopping 26-12 vote in the legislature.

[Duke87 1,070]

In plain English: California is raising their minimum wage.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-minimumwage-idUSKCN0WX2J8
Hasn't been signed yet but the governor is expected to.

Current minimum in California is $10, the increases are gradual and don't start until next year.

2017: $10.50
2018: $11
2019: $12
2020: $13
2021: $14
2022: $15

[Sabretooth78 808]

I read the name of that act and it sounds much colder than it actually is.  Actually, it reminds me of the Soup Nazi.  "Hey, you with no skills over there.  No job for you!  Come back, one year!"

[igotthis 12]

I'm glad CA decided to raise the minimum wage. It won't hurt businesses and it will take the hurt away from those who are literally living at the poverty level.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

19 hours ago, igotthis said:

I'm glad CA decided to raise the minimum wage. It won't hurt businesses and it will take the hurt away from those who are literally living at the poverty level.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/01/09/once-more-into-the-breach-on-this-seattle-minimum-wage-and-jobs-theory/#60d4cf4626d2

http://www.letspizza.co.uk/home.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/09/the-restaurant-with-invisible-waiters/403297/

https://briggo.com/web/

It will have little effect in the short-term for migrant farm workers (unless border control is strong and migrant farm worker programs are cancelled, that would require robots to maintain California's crop harvesting). That's why I said Unemployment for Unskilled Citizens. Restaurant workers will no longer work 2 jobs. They'll live off welfare checks if at all.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/robots-step-into-new-planting-harvesting-roles-1429781404

I expect demand for waitstaff, cashiers, and telemarketers to plummet by 2018, demand for baristas (unless they go the Foxy Latte route) and fast food cooks to plummet by 2020, and drivers, construction workers, and other minimum-wage jobs to plummet as soon as the technology matures and hits the market. At least those are my predictions for Silicon Valley and the rest of the San Francisco Metropolitan area.

[krbe 193]

Quite interesting. It would be even more interesting to see a comparison with the standard cost of living. As society grows more complex and demands more in the way of consumption and money, it makes no sense to complain about a higher-than-average hike in the minimum wage.

[Sabretooth78 808]

^ Shout out to the Fed for allowing the dollar to lose in excess of 98% of its value over that timeframe!

[igotthis 12]

http://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

Pretty cool read, even if from the Dept of Labor.

IGT