Current events general chat

[Lord-Marcus]

Gee, its like they think wages not increasing in-line with inflation, and a reliance on tipping to cover employee's wage needs, is a sustainable model.

 

[Scalenex]

Gee, its like they think wages not increasing in-line with inflation, and a reliance on tipping to cover employee's wage needs, is a sustainable model.

I don't like eating at any of the aforementioned companies.

That said, I think a $22 minimum wage for fast food workers (or anyone) is not a good idea. I know people who's labor is not worthless but it is not worth $22/hour. Laws like this make people unemployed. A while back, I heard a report that the US military said they cannot effectively find a role for people with IQ 88 or below. That's about 11% of population by the way. With a $20+ minimum wage, they basically cannot work anywhere.

In the case of fast food, what this does do is accelerate the trend of automation in fast food. Eventually places like McDonalds, will have three employees at any given and a bunch of robots. One fry cook (making a modest amount over the minimum wage), one manager/robot technician (making a relatively high wage), and one custodian making whatever the minimum wage is.

All the memes of the McDonalds soft serve machine will be cranked up to 11 as McDonalds will have even more things "temporarily" unavailable due to tech issues.

I am not sure what the best way to help people on the bottom like this. I don't believe a $22 hour/minimum wage is a good idea, but I don't have a better idea other than no minimum wage at all plus some kind of charity/welfare program to make up the difference for low wage workers but I recognize that system is still difficult to implement and still potentially able to be abused.

Most of the laws California passes (presumably with good intentions) that the rest of the country does not pass end up causing a net increase in human misery in the state and sometimes beyond.

But at least they got rid of plastic straws!

My old church had a sister congregation that ran a homeless shelter in. They used their status as a church to get around zoning restrictions on homeless shelters but the locals kept reporting on them for "violating fire codes" and other BS.

The big problem is that Californians are very compassionate about helping the homeless....as long as the poor people are staying somewhere far far away.

Meanwhile, they quietly pass a bunch of laws to make people poorer such as a rule that every pork product sold in California must come from a pig farm where the pigs have triple the usual space in their pens (pushed for by animal rights and pro-Vegan lobbies). The rules apply even if the pigs are raised outside of California. This raised the price of pork in California a lot. Guess who relies on pork for most of their protein? Lower income working families!

If you are paying more for your bacon, not a huge negative impact, but if there 10, 50, or 100 laws that make basic things more expensive, eventually you are going to push people into poverty.

The attempt to push for more electric cars is even worse since it affects the cost of shipping goods which makes everything more expensive, the fact that the current power grid is not capable of running every vehicle in California which would require expensive upgrades of the infrastructure (and said upgrades will increase CO2 emissions cancelling the whole ostensible point of a fleet of electric trucks), and there are long lines at charging station which will slow things down and ultimately increase the cost of shipping goods by truck again because you still pay truckers for the time they are waiting in line to fuel up.

Thus the only result is the poor and middle class are poorer. The rich get to watch their Tesla stock increase.

 

[Scalenex]

Machiavelli had a whole chapter of his famous treatise on why relying on a mercenaries was a bad idea. I didn't think that part applied to modern days because you don't hear about mercenaries being used much and I figured modern communications tech would nullify a lot of the problems with medieval/renaissance era mercenaries. But apparently Putin is okay making 600 year old military errors.

 

[Killer Angel]

But apparently Putin is okay making 600 year old military errors.

Well, if the solution to the problem is to let the mercenaries do some trash talking and don't take it personal, it wouldn't be a price too high.

 

[Krox_v.2]

I don't like eating at any of the aforementioned companies.



I am not sure what the best way to help people on the bottom like this. I don't believe a $22 hour/minimum wage is a good idea, but I don't have a better idea other than no minimum wage at all plus some kind of charity/welfare program to make up the difference for low wage workers but I recognize that system is still difficult to implement and still potentially able to be abused.

.

I favor a universal basic income myself. There's been a few studies and experimental programs to indicate that it doesn't undermine work ethic, can actually boost employment and benefits people in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/9736...trings-attached-stipends-pays-off-study-finds


https://www.mckinsey.com/industries...n-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income

 

[Scalenex]

I favor a universal basic income myself. There's been a few studies and experimental programs to indicate that it doesn't undermine work ethic, can actually boost employment and benefits people in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/9736...trings-attached-stipends-pays-off-study-finds


https://www.mckinsey.com/industries...n-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income

The articles both cover experiments where a random sample is given a UBI.

It creates more unintended side effects when the entire population gets UBI at once. Mainly inflation.

UBI is not the same thing as a minimum wage which was what I was talking about. I would argue that minimum wage is harder to justify than UBI.

I am not a fan of UBI, but UBI is not on the list of things I outright oppose. Ultimately I think UBI is usually a wash but I don't think it makes society worse off as a whole.

 

[Krox_v.2]

The articles both cover experiments where a random sample is given a UBI.

It creates more unintended side effects when the entire population gets UBI at once. Mainly inflation.

UBI is not the same thing as a minimum wage which was what I was talking about. I would argue that minimum wage is harder to justify than UBI.

I am not a fan of UBI, but UBI is not on the list of things I outright oppose. Ultimately I think UBI is usually a wash but I don't think it makes society worse off as a whole.

Never said it was the same as minimum wage, just presented it as an alternative or supplement.

 

[Scalenex]

So Germany has upset Europe for not sending tanks into Eastern Europe.

 

[Scalenex]

I understand with global warming, epidemic diseases, war, food shortages, and economic turmoil that there are bigger problems than Daylight Savings Day.

But okay, nobody like's Daylight Savings, it costs money and lives (not a lot, but it doesn't help people). It's nonpartisan. Congress can fix it in a like a day.

When you have big seemingly unsolvable problems, it is a confidence boost to solve a small problem.

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

So Germany has upset Europe for not sending tanks into Eastern Europe.

Yes, because they've been incredibly weak and uncooperative in the stand against Putin's tyranny. Scholz is the second-biggest Putin appeaser after only Angela Merkel, who was always fawning to Putin to get that Nordstream Pipeline built.

I certainly wouldn't trust Germany an inch as an ally if Putin decided to declare war on the rest of Europe. So much for being a 'grown-up' country as some navel-gazing citizens of my own nation describe Deutschland.

 

[Scalenex]

Interesting analysis of the arrest warrant issued against Putin.

 

[Scalenex]

Finland is making history.

 

[Scalenex]

The title of this video is misleading needlessly click baity but as an interested observer of the Ukraine war, I found this interesting.

A more accurate title would be, "Why Iran is providing more direct military aid to Russia than anyone else right now." They are not actually attacking Ukraine.

 

[Scalenex]

I've been watching a lot of videos on the Ukrainian Counteroffensive. I honestly don't know if the news is good for Ukraine or good for Putin. The differing news sources reminded me of an old Simpson's gag about soccer.

 

[Killer Angel]

...am i wrong, or at this point the oxygen reserve in the lost "observation submarine" should be officially depleted?

 

[Scalenex]

"May you live in interesting times," a blessing and a curse.

Turned out the submarine imploded rather quickly. At least the passengers didn't have to have hours to contemplate their deaths as they slowly asphyxiated.

Now Putin has a Civil War or something else. It's not clear where Prigozhin was trying to do. Was he trying to overthrow Putin? If so, why was he verbally dancing around attacking him directly in his statement?

Was he trying to win Putin's favor? I don't see how even a crazy person would think this scheme would work?

Did he just REALLY hate the military officers he was targeting?

One thing that keeps popping up in the comment section of Youtube videos is "this is a psy-op" but if it is I don't see how this benefits Putin since he lost a lot of face, it crippled his army morale, and emboldened Ukraine's international backers.

At this point, I would say the only chance Putin has of winning is to hold out long enough for NATO and the rest of Ukraine's allies to get fatigued by spending billions of dollars on this quagmire and cut off Ukraine's spigot of money, supplies, and weapons. But really, if anything the current fiasco is going to embolden the coalition against Putin to keep the aid coming.

My eyes are glued to my computer as I search for more updates.

 

[Scalenex]

I've been trying to wrap my head around the Pirgohzin Wagner psuedo-coup and every explanation I've seen seems to have gaping holes in it. This explanation seems solid.

 

[Lord-Marcus]

At the end of the day Ukraine needs to be freed, and if Wagner gets vaporized stepping over the polish border so much the better

 

[Killer Angel]

if Wagner gets vaporized stepping over the polish border so much the better

Can i hope that, at the same time, an asteroid or something similar could vaporize the entirety of Battalion Azov?
The fact that we are supporting also these guys makes me puke.

 

[Lord-Marcus]

Can i hope that, at the same time, an asteroid or something similar could vaporize the entirety of Battalion Azov?
The fact that we are supporting also these guys makes me puke.

Until Ukraine is free of Russian presence, let that particular battalion and the Russians kill each other.