I always love hearing from other people who started with computers by typing in basic from magazines.
For me it was a TI 99/4a and typing in code got me completely hooked on programming. Whether it was a game, a 4 bit cpu simulator of some sort (memories are vague) or a word search solver didn’t matter. It all felt magical.
Logo did nothing for me. It never gave me that sense of satisfaction that I got from writing in basic or assembly.
I think I like the suggestion, but it’s firmly on the capitalism end of the spectrum. Profit sharing is one of the incentives I look at when looking for a job. Not too far off from employee stock programs or matching 401k with company stock.
If you had suggested the “public” get a share of the profits then you start touching socialism but then I’d also hate the suggestion.
I would bet for most people, employee stock programs or company stock will provide far lower and more volatile return than an SP500 index fund. The US public has long been able to benefit from profit sharing, all they have to do is by a low cost broad market index fund.
The root of the problem is that the labor that most people in the US sell is not in sufficiently high demand to afford them the compensation to be able to afford the lifestyle they expect, since they are competing with the rest of the world willing to do it for less.
Regarding the first point: owners typically pay themselves a salary in addition to owning the company and thus benefit from both. Employees do not have this advantage.
The two problems are not mutually exclusive, and certainly unskilled labour is a significant problem for a good fraction of the population; but if this were the only problem, then we wouldn't see the amount of wealth concentration and decoupling of productivity from income that we observe.
There is no guarantee in both the owners salary or equity growing (just like an employee has no guarantee of having their job tomorrow).
The wealth concentration is a combination of government policy rewarding asset owners and automation and communication and transportation technologies increasing competition for labor sellers.
The automation also allows enormous economies of scale such that fewer businesses can do it all, which is also why you see wealth concentration.
The public already gets its share via taxes, I'd argue, the problem that I see right now is really that the wins for the employees are (usually) limited to their salary, whereas owners get everything that's left over. And the more you already have, the more you are able to gain..
You need to demonstrate this with receipts. Most of what I see are large corporations getting tax breaks regardless of job or wealth creation within an area. The idea that the public is offset by taxes on corporations is quite fucking ridiculous to anyone who pays any attention to what effective rates corporations pay.
Read Copaganda. The footnotes with references is very long and detailed for those inclined to read the sources, it reminds me of the MLA stuff we had to write in high school. There are many references to LAPD and LA county sheriffs with overlapping jurisdiction.
> My impression is that the vast majority of "savings" was never achieved by promised efficiency gains or elimination of pure waste, but instead simply by cutting projects, i.e. slashing some form of public service or benefit in order to save tax money. Which is obviously inferior.
That doesn’t seem inferior at all. There’s very little to be gained by doing everything the same but with less money; the only way to make an actual difference is to quit doing the stupid shit that’s expensive. That’s what 90% of the world means by efficiency, i.e. don’t do the things that don’t need done.
CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O - 890kJ/mol
C + O2 -> CO2 - 393kJ/mol
The relevance of those equations are that CH4 is methane, the principle component of natural gas, C is pure carbon, the principle component of coal and the USA has been transitioning it's energy production from coal to natural gas.
The above equations say if you produce the same amount of electricity with natural has, your CO2 emissions halve. That is the driver of the reduction you point to. It is nice to see, but halve is the best that can happen. Meanwhile if China's continues down it's current path, their CO2 emissions for electricity production will drop to 0.
According to the EIA, the USA has about 18 years of reserves of natural gas at current production rates [0]. The USA has about 70 years of reserves of coal, so this transition to using natural gas is temporary. After about 100 years the USA will run out of both. If you want to see what that looks like, look at the UK.
China can get to 0 emissions with their approach - replacing coal with solar and batteries. The US cannot do the same with theirs - replacing coal with natural gas.
The United States outsourced the bulk of its consumer production to China and the latter's emissions are still falling. You don't find that impressive?
Ogling for women carries with it the implied risk of rape due to natural differences in physical strength, and women experience rape at a much greater rate than men, so that threat would have higher salience than any equivalent gender-based insecurity.
For me it was a TI 99/4a and typing in code got me completely hooked on programming. Whether it was a game, a 4 bit cpu simulator of some sort (memories are vague) or a word search solver didn’t matter. It all felt magical.
Logo did nothing for me. It never gave me that sense of satisfaction that I got from writing in basic or assembly.