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Open thread Dec. 2, 2016

Dan Crawford | December 2, 2016 11:05 am

Tags: open thread Comments (23) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
23 Comments
  • Denis Drew says:
    December 2, 2016 at 7:15 pm

    Maybe cab drivers should look forward to self-driving cars. If a safety driver is required they would have to pay us minimum wage. Woopee!

    Seriously, would you like to address your stories — or complaints or questions about the service or the world — to computers?

  • coberly says:
    December 2, 2016 at 9:10 pm

    Denis

    you mean like I am doing now?

    i suppose i should believe that computers will drive better than people, but I don’t think I could trust myself to one.

  • Denis Drew says:
    December 3, 2016 at 12:14 am

    Coberly,
    When the stats say computers are safer I guess they will be on the road.

    One airline pilot predicted that computers wont be safe on the road until all the other vehicles are computers too — to avoid sudden crazy moves that humans make.

  • William Ryan says:
    December 3, 2016 at 8:14 am

    Do you know that in India and other parts of the world they put a large water bucket near full of water by the driver of large trucks and school busses during the driver test. If the bus comes back with any water on the floor, you failed the driving test for the job… Now flash over to this country and ask your self if anybody here drives with that kind of caution or regard for safety. The answer is most the time No. This is only one reason why we are fastly headed to driverless cars. Another reason may be because we cannot stop people from using cell phones while driving…

  • coberly says:
    December 3, 2016 at 10:33 am

    Denis

    computers never make sudden crazy moves?

    people never arrive at sudden creative solutions to unanticipated problems?

  • spencer says:
    December 3, 2016 at 12:01 pm

    Personally, I’m at an age that I am starting to think about not being able to drive in another decade.

    So I’m really looking forward to driver-less cars so I will be able to sustain my independence.

    I’m a few years ahead of the baby-boomers, but driver-less cars is just going to be another way they will change our society and/or economy.

  • coberly says:
    December 3, 2016 at 12:10 pm

    Spencer

    most cars are already driver-less.

  • Denis Drew says:
    December 3, 2016 at 1:54 pm

    Re: A Job Is More Than a Paycheck — Dec 2, 2016, By Noah Smith
    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-02/a-job-is-more-than-a-paycheck

    Life satisfaction = paycheck satisfaction = life satisfaction — or is it the other way around?

    Enter Walmart: the land of $400 paychecks. The mostly American raised employees are embarrassed to work there.

    Enter McDonald’s: the land of $400 paychecks. The mostly Mexican and Indian employees are happy and vibrant — they know they are in a tight spot but they could be doing so much worse (in Mexico or India).

    Enter taxi world: my former land of $800 a week pay (cash every day) — and the former land of happy vibrant employees. The now world-wide raised employees are happy and vibrant — but they know they are in a tight spot.

    What happened to my Chicago taxi job?: one 30 cent rise in the mileage rate between 1981 and 1997 — at which 1990 midpoint Chicago started building subways to both airports, opening up unlimited limos, putting on free trolleys between all the downtown hot spots — and — adding 40% more cabs. Since I left San Francisco (1996-2004) the city has doubled the number of taxicabs.

    Enter Chicago’s south or west sides: be a good idea to wear a bullet proof vest. 100,000 out of my guess 200,000 gang age males have opted out of the $400 paycheck, straight economy.

    Go back to 1970 New York. My Teamsters local 804 had just won a contract for $800 a week (adjusted) for furniture warehouse stockmen at 60% of today’s per capita income. Today’s 804 pulls down more like $1200 a week for UPS driver (occupations with similar heavy strain). Ask Jimmy Hoffa why — and how.
    *************************************

    45% of the US workforce pulls down $600 a week or (a lot) less. The 45% pull in only 10% of overall income.

    The next 54% pull in 70%. Top 1% pull 20% — up from 10% a couple of gens back.

    A unionized bottom 45% could (could) squeeze 10% of overall income out of the next 54% by raising prices at Walmart or McDonald’s. Take more radical measures for the 99% to squeeze back 10% from the top 1%.

    The 99%’s unions wont think twice about resetting the 90% fed income tax on earnings over $2 million, say. Or whatever it takes.

    Overall, the money is there — and so is so much efficiency through reform. Less financialization, less (much less!) pharma price gouging, fewer pro-profit ed ripoffs. Enough union density puts an reform cop on ever corner.

    Come to think of it enough unions is the only thing that can clear up the last of the US crime wave: the drug wars on impoverished neighborhoods streets.
    ************************************

    The irony that it remains undone is that the path to high union density is as simple as protecting that path from management muscling. The American labor market is the only market we have where unfair market power operates completely unchecked (it is illegal) — it is the only labor market in the modern, first world as far as I know where management even tries to muscle labor.

    Repub Congress not going to add enforcement power to NLRB (love to see mandated elections with a finding of busting). But — if there were no other labor laws whatsoever — states could certainly legislate protections of employees in their separate labor markets. Federal preemption should not effect that power (just as states can add to the min wage but not subtract).

    Just open up the path for employees to organize a collective bargaining unit if they want to (no more gauntlet) and get out of their way.

    Whatever high union density does or does not accomplish in wages and benefits — union employees will understand they have squeezed the maximum that can be squeezed out of the consumer in the free market = happy and virbrant former gang bangers stacking shelves, hopefully not in too tight a spot.

  • coberly says:
    December 3, 2016 at 2:33 pm

    Denis

    hate to see you preaching to the choir and the deaf congregation.

    do you have any idea how to get unions back in the picture?

    my own efforts to get Social Security to recognized that it is worker paid, and the wokers can pay for their own retirement forever if the politicians only let them… has convinced me that the politicians are not listenting… none of them. right or left.

    there is no actual democracy anymore. only a kind of TV “reality show.” the winner does take the spoils, but it has nothing to do with honesty or actual thought about the country’s problems.

  • bkrasting says:
    December 3, 2016 at 6:47 pm

    Coberly – “Most cars are driver-less”

    Really? Most cars? Like 51% of registered cars?

  • coberly says:
    December 3, 2016 at 7:21 pm

    krasting

    more like 95%

    • run75441 says:
      December 4, 2016 at 7:54 am

      coberly:

      Do you have a punch line to this for BK? 🙂

  • bkrasting says:
    December 3, 2016 at 9:09 pm

    Coberly – 95% you say?? There are 250 million registered cars. So you say that 240 million are self driving?

    Coberly that is not even remotely correct. The following article says that the first driver-less cars are still 2 years away. What make and model cars now for sale are totally driver-less?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/02/self-driving-car-elon-musk-tech-predictions-tesla-google

  • coberly says:
    December 3, 2016 at 10:42 pm

    krasting

    i haven’t got the heart to explain it to you.

    be careful crossing the street.

  • bkrasting says:
    December 4, 2016 at 6:55 am

    Classic Coberly – He says something false. When confronted, he ducks an answer with a snide remark.

  • EMichael says:
    December 4, 2016 at 9:04 am

    BK,

    You cannot seriously think you and Cob are talking about the same thing, can you?

  • bkrasting says:
    December 4, 2016 at 9:17 am

    EM – I’m not sure what Coberly is talking about. He has said that 95% of all cars on the road are able to drive without a driver. I think that is totally false.

    Possibly you can enlighten me. What did Coberly mean?

  • EMichael says:
    December 4, 2016 at 9:29 am

    It is a joke, for God’s sake.

  • bkrasting says:
    December 4, 2016 at 10:09 am

    EM At 12:01 Spencer makes a comment. Coberly responded a few minutes later:

    “Spencer

    most cars are already driver-less.”

    Was that the joke? That was the funny part? And what’s God got to do with this?

  • EMichael says:
    December 4, 2016 at 10:19 am

    He is making fun of the current human drivers.

    God is the only one who can help you. Meanwhile, I am an atheist, which sort of points out that you are beyond help.

    • run75441 says:
      December 4, 2016 at 11:39 am

      thank you. I did not want to state the obvious.

  • EMichael says:
    December 5, 2016 at 10:14 am

    Run,

    Which? The “driver” obvious or the “beyond help” obvious?

    • run75441 says:
      December 5, 2016 at 11:08 am

      sigh, take your pick . . .

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