Except with nix it doesn’t make it weird. If you delete iwd and something stops working, then you can just roll back to the previous generation of the nix store that included iwd.
Didn’t read the article, but why would you go work at a lower end job when you can make 80-90% of what you would make by just collecting unemployment benefits?
I personally know at least 2 people that admitted this and said they would wait until unemployment benefits expire to seek work.
Same in Germany and Austria. Local farmers complain about a shortage of fruit pickers in the season even though there are plenty of able bodied unemployed locals with no skills or degrees but since they have the option of staying on unemployment, why would they do back-breaking work for 10-20% more money then what they get paid for sleeping in at home?
So they just import and abuse poor workers from Eastern Europe[1] living and working in illegal conditions, who have no better options back home than to do back-breaking work for what would be peanuts in Germany but somewhat-half-decent money back home.
The local authorities know about these illegalities regarding foreign worker exploitation but turn a blind eye as this keeps the meat and vegetables cheap in the supermarkets for the very price sensitive local consumers, since the farmers are all under the pressure of the big supermarket chains to deliver produce on time and on razor thin margins so they have no other way but to find cheap exploitable workforce to stay competitive or lose their contracts.
I wonder if the solution to this is to offer workers a non financial benefit, so it doesn't cost the farmer and more to employ a local person, but that local person gains something that they wouldn't get just by sitting at home collecting benefits...
Why don't companies pay more then? In Switzerland service employees make 20-35 dollars an hour. Is there some intrinsic reason why employers feel compelled to pay so little?
Switzerland is also one of the most expensive places in the world. As is NYC, where I live and the minimum wage is $15/hour and service jobs paying between $20-$35 is not unusual.
In the US, there are also places where the minimum wage is $7.50 (the federal minimum wage) and things also cost far less. The US in general is a much more diverse place than a place like Switzerland, and yet it’s all governed by the same federal law, which paid expanded unemployment benefits the same regardless of where the person is located.
>Is there some intrinsic reason why employers feel compelled to pay so little?
The average US small-business owner makes around $70k/year, less than most devs: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/this-is-how-much-to-pay-your... . It's not like small business are rolling in cash. The only way for them to pay more is either to raise prices (meaning everything costs more) or hire fewer people. Would you be willing to patronise a shop that charges 50% more for coffee than the shop next to it because it pays its workers more? I'd bet not.
Switzerland is a very rich country, so all wages are higher; shops can afford to pay more.
>Would you be willing to patronise a shop that charges 50% more for coffee than the shop next to it because it pays its workers more? I'd bet not.
I'm not a business owner, but from a customer's point of view, I regularly settle on my favorite stores for reasons other than price. As long as it's not exorbitantly priced (e.g., $8 coffees in a small city), I prefer places that have good atmosphere, offer quality products and service, and become part of the community. A coffee shop that displays and sells works from local artists is better than a Dunkin Donuts.
My wife chooses where to shop and eat by price, and I hate it. We end up saving some money but often not enjoying it (cheap batteries that need frequent replacement, foul-tasting marinara, etc.). No matter how thrifty we were, I just see it as paying to be less happy.
>Would you be willing to patronise a shop that charges 50% more for coffee than the shop next to it because it pays its workers more? I'd bet not.
I would, assuming that it’s not just the exact same product. I really enjoy going to different coffee shops and checking out what they’ve got and what they do differently. I don’t actually care about price; I would pay $20 for a cup of something really interesting. I’m not talking about drip from an air pot, think more WBC. I wouldn’t expect someone at that level in their craft to work at a place paying minimum wage, and I wouldn’t expect the coffee shop paying people min wage to have excellent coffee, which I’m happy to pay more for.
There is a market for McDonald’s coffee as there is a market for $20/cup coffee.
Presumably, a business struggling to hire has too much demand to fill with their current workforce. The econ 101 solution to this is to raise prices or hire more capacity. If hiring additional capacity is impractical raising prices would be the next step.
If we're living in a world where prices are inelastic, then labor supply will also become inelastic. Presuming that successful businesses aren't trying to hire for the sake of hiring, then it's almost certain that they are raising prices to meet demand.
Yes. Absolutely yes. If your workers make more money, they are happier and provide better service. The coffee shop next store will likely have terrible service, with high turnover because everyone there is just waiting for their chance to get out and move onto a better paying job.
Why do you think people shop at stores like Publix or Whole Foods when Walmart has lower prices? Because those stores (even though they still treat their employees--sorry, "associates" poorly) have better service, due to better pay.
In Switzerland the cost of living is also >50% higher than other western European countries. Housing is even 100% higher. Service employees in Switzerland come mainly from Germany, France, Portugal, Brazil etc.
It does scale, because the assumption is that you’ve built your life around that previous level of income. Going from a few hundred K/year down to 60k/yr would probably be devastating for most.
The thing that people seem to forget is how higher AGI = higher taxes. People are just getting back some of what they’ve paid into the system already. Would you expect to get full coverage insurance on a new Ferrari, with premiums based on the value of that, then get compensated by the insurance for the value of the cheapest car on the market in the event that it was stolen?
I'm not arguing against the fact that unemployment scales, I am merely stating a fact.
OP's question was "why don't you pay more? That will make people want to leave unemployment". My response was "higher wages will not incentive people to leave unemployment because they would be receiving unemployment that scaled with those higher wages".
And the natural outcome of the business’s landlord running off loans/mortgage. Credit makes everything harder to change, and the more coupled the system, the worse it is.
Usury to me implies that it's a predatory rate. Even with reasonable rates, being on the hook for a reasonable amount still means I'm now incentivized to keep my little corner of the world static, as well as simply slowing change down, which also forces change in the wrong places while the "right" change plays catch-up.
If you have a chain of A owing B $2k/mo and B owing C $2k/mo and so on from A to Z, then if A through Y's sectors all change, Y still needs to pay Z, meaning X needs to pay Y, mean W still needs to pay X, and so forth. Meaning that even though nobody's paying usury rates, nearly everyone is still heavily constrained in terms of how they can adapt to change. And so they're incentivized to push the world towards whatever scenario they planned for, not because they like that scenario a priori, but because that's what they planned for.
tl;dr Credit lets you play time arbitrage, which sets up bad incentives when things don't go according to plan.
It's proven that any interest rate above zero is destructive and predatory. Thus, there is no difference between usury and interest in terms of immorality. There's a reason that usury is prohibited in all three major religions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity).
We shouldn't have chains of people owing money to each other, we've seen what happened in 2008. Prohibiting lending money with interest will not allow such chains to form.
>Didn’t read the article, but why would you go work at a lower end job when you can make 80-90% of what you would make by just collecting unemployment benefits?
I think you wouldn't. A family member runs a small shop and unemployment plus additional COVID benefits ended up being very close to wages of some employees, who did the math and decided that 90% of the pay for 5% (not zero due to expectations for unemployment) of the work.
> Didn’t read the article, but why would you go work at a lower end job when you can make 80-90% of what you would make by just collecting unemployment benefits?
There’s a good article somewhere that looks into that specific question and provides some data and weighs alternative explanations. I wish I could find the link.
Alternatively we could all just debate it without any of the data from the article. I’m pretty sure I know which option is most popular.
You’re getting downvoted to hell, but it really is a let-me-google-that-for-you kind of question, given what the article presents. It’s frustrating to see so much discussion going that way.
Unemployment isn't UBI. If you work you lose the unemployment money you would have got for free, hence the disincentive. UBI (most proposals) would supplement work not replace it.
With UBI, if you take an additional job, you would lose a large share of your income to taxes used to pay for the UBI.
Yes, you can restructure income tax levels so that people get to keep most of their additional income, and then you'd have to tax the remaining people more heavily to compensate. But if that's the solution, why don't we do that today?
This argument shows that UBI doesn't solve the incentive problem. It can only be solved by keeping welfare benefits significantly lower than minimum wages, which means lowering one or raising the other. This isn't logically impossible, but it's matter of political feasibility. That's true of UBI also.
I don't necessarily disagree. I think UBI is an important thing to study and consider as we increasingly displace workers with the ever-moving capability of tech, but it will undoubtedly have some unintended consequences.
I do think it's important to point out though that you lose unemployment if you work, so there's direct incentive there.
The U means that you still get your monthly basic income even if you work. With unemployment working earns you 10-20% more. With UBI working earns you 105-115% more.
The point from most of the comments seems to be, if unemployment is enough to live on and the alternative is a job you don't particularly want to do, then there's no incentive to do the job you don't want to do?
If UBI just replaces unemployment, how does that calculation change? You still have enough money to live on you still don't want to do the job being offered?
Unless UBI is sufficiently low that you need a job to survive, in which case... is it UBI?
Nothing says people aren't willing to work if they pay is good enough. Unemployment is effectively a 90% tax rate in the bottom bracket, making work pointless.
Just look at the Nordic countries, very good unemployment benefits but we do not have any issues with people staying on benefits even if they could get a good paying job.
A UBI that works as e.g. a negative income tax would definitely work.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and answer the question honestly. Assuming we're talking about a country where "The Government" is pretty well behaved, said government doesn't put that money in its pockets. It makes it work for the people it represents. Working for your money and becoming filthy rich is fine. But when you die, you die. None of that money is yours anymore, because you no longer exist. We, as a society, are free to decide what we do with what's left of you and your belongings. In an ideal world, we can use that to better the lives of others.
Unless you were a truly stingy person in life, your affluence will have already have had huge positive impacts on those near and dear to you. Once you're dead, why should they be any more important than any other person?
> But when you die, you die. None of that money is yours anymore, because you no longer exist. We, as a society, are free to decide with what's left of you and your belongings.
Most governments enforce a person’s will after they die. People generally elect to distribute their property to particular people, specifically to avoid it ending up in the hands of “we, as a society”.
As a society it's fine to execute a will, as long as it doesn't harm society. Entrenching generational wealth and furthering poverty seems like it's harmful. This is understood, after all that's why there is an inheritance tax in the first place. I'm argueing that it needs to be way higher.
I disagree with your assumption that entrenching generational wealth furthers poverty. When inventors believe that they can build generational wealth, they are motivated to produce better products and services, which they are able to offer at far lower prices than their value to all of us, so we all become richer. For example, I am writing this on a smartphone that cost just a couple hundred dollars. With it, I can access all of the world's knowledge and communicate with anyone instantaneously. For just a couple hundred more dollars, I sit beside an air conditioner that keeps me comfortably cool even though it is boiling outside. The barons of the gilded age could not have purchased such products for any price. So who is richer, me or them? The inventors of these products are rich, but what do I care? I am lucky to have been born into a world where these products are available for such a low price. While it hasn't been proven conclusively, anecdotal evidence suggests that more invention occurs in countries which defend generational wealth, and we all benefit.
>vilifying people for wanting to pass down their hard-earned money
In the context of the comment you're replying to, none of this is reasonable, and some of it isn't even relevant. You should consider that you're forming an emotional, hostile argument.
Perhaps the angry reaction is justified given that the comment implied that “society” should be free to do as it pleases with a person and their property when they die. Most countries today vigorously protect the bodies and property of the dead.
> We, as a society, are free to decide with what's left of you and your belongings
A country can be a society, and if that society decides that its dead bodies and their belonging need protection, then so be it. Doesn't seem like the most beneficial thing to do, but you're free to disagree with me. If a dead person's organs can be used to save the lives of others, vigorously protecting that body seems like a selfish thing to do.
Most western societies have rejected your utilitarian thinking, upholding an individual's choices over any forgone benefit to others. For example, every day people die on organ transplant waiting lists, and every day healthy people die in car accidents, but their organs are discarded because they did not check the "organ donor" box on their driver's license application.
> Your belongings and wealth belong to your estate and as the owner of it you decide how it should be distributed.
Well, that's literally the question at hand. You don't get to just say that it is so. A dead person's wealth belonged to them, but they are dead. They can't vote, they can't apply for loans, and, the parent is arguing, they can't arbitrarily pass their money to whoever they choose. They could have, while alive, but now they are dead.
> Because it's none of your business. Why on earth are you vilifying people for wanting to pass down their hard-earned money to their children?
This is just some weird non-sequitur. No one's doing any vilifying, and Parent is arguing that it is societies business (and incidentally, given that an estate tax exists, society currently agrees with the parent poster)
You're deliberately misrepresenting what's being said. We do understand the legal concept of an estate. But its validity is what's being discussed here.
No, you can't. There are all sorts of restrictions, which you already know. But since you are deliberately missing the point, I won't be responding. Feel free to get in the last word.
> Once you're dead, why should they be any more important than any other person?
Why favor your family, friends, or countrymen over any other person during your lifetime either? Everyone behaves this way. For example, why does government sponsored health care in western countries only cover their own citizens? Do the lives of people in less affluent countries not matter? Do they have less intrinsic value?
This is a poor argument - it contains no distinction from any taxed transaction. All money changing hands has "already been taxed" in the way you are using the phrase. Unless you are saying that all tax is wrong, in which case you should definitely make that argument rather than this much more specific one.
It isn't about "deserving" anything. The societal problems behind inter-generational wealth are wide and deep. This was recognized by the founders of the US, in particular Thomas Jefferson.
Adam Smith: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."
This is creating a false narrative that the only way to economic mobility is through theft upon generational transfer. It conveys a message of helplessness rather than rewarding usefulness and it's a vicious cycle.
Economic mobility should be solely predicated on the expression of competence/ability in the pursuit of providing value to others in your society. It's not even that hard[1]. Get an education and a job, avoid the big economic sinks.
> This means that 40 percent of why some Americans are extraordinarily well off has nothing to do with smarts, hard work, frugality, lucky gambles or entrepreneurial ingenuity. It is simply because they were born to rich parents.
We should not fear the money landing in undeserving hands, it will rapidly be drained away if that is the case. Many(most?) very wealthy families employ wealth managers that ensure that money is profitably engaged with the society anyways, so in reality the money is not really in the heir's hands anyways, but is tied up in companies that are serving the country and employing others.
This starts with an excellent point - many bad, emotionally-driven arguments about how society works are predicated on the concept of "deserving". Bad people "deserve" to suffer in prison. Good people "deserve" every penny they make. The arguments rarely bother to go beyond those assumptions. The concept of "deserving" is real and important, but it's also commonly the linch pin of bad-faith arguments.
There are other purposes for taxes, the most famous one being Pigovian taxes, which attempt to price negative externalities into a market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax.
The inheritance tax is not a Pigovian tax, but its purpose can also be primarily non-budgetary.
They money I used to buy a candy bar is post-tax dollars dollars, but I still pay sales tax on it. They money I use to pay for a taxi ride are post-tax dollars, but the taxi driver still pays income tax on it. When I sell that stock I bought with post-tax dollars, I still pay capital gain taxes on the profits.
Post-tax dollars aren't magical things that mean you never pay taxes again. They're just an accounting tool that makes dealing with some tax-exempt activities easier.
Tax money must come from somewhere. Imagine this as a zero-sum game where you have some fixed total amount of taxation that you're trying to reach and the question is just who pays how much.
Given that, is there anyone who could possibly need their money less than the dead?
"Some will argue that this example ignores any income and payroll tax the wealthy parents paid when they originally earned the $50 million. But if the couple paid their personal chef’s wages out of after-tax income, we wouldn’t think their personal chef should get credit for the taxes they paid. Similarly, we should ignore any income or payroll tax the couple paid when considering how much their son should contribute to the costs of government."
Because dynastic wealth is unearned and aggravates unequal circumstances of birth and accumulates capital in less competitive markets thus delegitimizing the purported meritocracy that is capitalism.
In fact I think the government has all the rights to take all belongings after someone dies. After all the person earned it from society, not its descendants.
It's not just the money. Imagine real estate. Today's value might be completely out of the owners. Say granny wants you to inherit their old penthouse in downtown New York (just an example, I have no idea if it is technically possible to own such a thing) or any other real estate that they used for living and is now worth tens of millions. The government won't let you have it. Or Grandpa's old company. It makes a little profit but was always in the hands of the family and it is now evaluated for tens of millions. Government forces you to sell it.
I could go on. Art collection, old cars, even immaterial rights or stocks that are massively undervalued right now for one reason or another (for instance because the founder just died suddenly).
Inheritance taxation is inherently unjust because it cannot distinguish between goods that are easily traded for and the ones that cannot easily be sold.
These statements are so true. When our company had billing issues with in-app purchases, there were plenty of times that we wanted to refund people for their purchases and we had no way to do this on both Apple and Amazons platforms. We had to send them to Apple and Amazon customer service and we never knew if they got help or not. Google on the other hand actually made it very easy for us to find someone’s purchase and issue them a refund, but even with Google you are very removed from the customer and can’t directly contact them or find out much about the customer.
Also want to give you a big thank you for creating i3. After using it for a long time I can’t imagine going back to a setup without it. I almost always need 2 windows side by side and it makes that workflow so effortless.
The amount of misinformation/unverifiable information going on around internet communities right now is really showcasing a huge problem with our modern society.
There are no facts anymore, because nothing and nobody can be trusted.
This could easily be solved by something along the lines of “Version 3.0 maintains full compatibility with Version 2.2” at the top of their release notes.
I dislike the idea of going away from SemVer just for marketing purposes. At least as a user when I’m going to upgrade versions then I could see that “oh, this version doesn’t break compatibility”
You can disagree with me, but the legal aspect is still the same. You owned the physical delivery mechanism, and the single use license that delivery mechanism represented. Sure, you could sell that, but the point is still the same in that you never owned the content, legally speaking.
You never owned the copyright on the content, but you did own the thing. Not a "single-use license". Owning a CD is exactly like owning a book, in that way.
Grandparent was correct. Copyright law only allowed for private home exhibition of the music/movie. VHS tapes even came with a warning from the FBI. As in, the people who might show up at your house if you copied the movie or showed it to a large group of people.
Not only is it legal to resell media, but that FBI warning is not from the FBI at all, at least up until 2003. The FBI had nothing to do with that message before. They did finally authorize the use of their seal in 2003. Before that, just typical Hollywood trickery to scare people.
Yes and no, you need a different type of license for a public exhibition independent of the underlying media license.
Think of it as an underlying Windows OEM license that allows you to run Windows. If you want to hook computers together with an AD, you need client access licenses.
(Bear with me, This is the first time I’ve used Microsoft as an example to clarify a license issue.)
Point is, there’s a distinction between a public and private performance. I believe that different stakeholders get paid for each.
Amazon really missed the boat when they came out with their crappy phone attempt. They could have invested more money and made some decent hardware instead of trying to do something gimmicky. They still haven't really learned though by launching poorly designed Kindle Fires with low res screens that lag a bunch. I wonder how different it would be if Amazon had launched a device like the Pixel as a phone.
Maybe, and this is just a guess, making good hardware isn't actually that easy? Did they hire any pros or did they try to build the knowhow internally?
