Krugman: Is the Computer Revolution Coming To a Close? 540
ninguna writes "According to Paul Krugman: 'Gordon argues, rightly in my view, that we've really had three industrial revolutions so far, each based on a different cluster of technologies. The analysis in Gordon's paper links periods of slow and rapid growth to the timing of the three industrial revolutions:
IR #1 (steam, railroads) from 1750 to 1830.
IR #2 (electricity, internal combustion engine, running water, indoor toilets, communications, entertainment, chemicals, petroleum) from 1870 to 1900.
IR #3 (computers, the web, mobile phones) from 1960 to present.
What Gordon then does is suggest that IR #3 has already mostly run its course, that all our mobile devices and all that are new and fun but not that fundamental. It's good to have someone questioning the tech euphoria; but I've been looking into technology issues a lot lately, and I'm pretty sure he's wrong, that the IT revolution has only begun to have its impact.' Is Krugman right, will robots put laborers and even the educated out of work?"
IR #1 (steam, railroads) from 1750 to 1830.
IR #2 (electricity, internal combustion engine, running water, indoor toilets, communications, entertainment, chemicals, petroleum) from 1870 to 1900.
IR #3 (computers, the web, mobile phones) from 1960 to present.
What Gordon then does is suggest that IR #3 has already mostly run its course, that all our mobile devices and all that are new and fun but not that fundamental. It's good to have someone questioning the tech euphoria; but I've been looking into technology issues a lot lately, and I'm pretty sure he's wrong, that the IT revolution has only begun to have its impact.' Is Krugman right, will robots put laborers and even the educated out of work?"
I would argue (Score:5, Interesting)
that IR 4 is robotics. Not that robotics are a continuation of IT.
Robots building robots. (Score:3)
I agree. I think that the next "Industrial Revolution" will be robotic factories producing robots for other tasks/industries.
Now, will the robotic-built robots be single purpose or general purpose? I don't know. But general purpose robots would lead (I believe) to another "hacker" revolution. The same as the general purpose computer did.
Re: (Score:3)
Tag on 3D printing and automated machining of parts and you don't have to have humans except to fix the things that robots can't. And to do all that, you need energy. Energy is key to producing wealth.
Want to fix our economy? Give tax breaks for creating energy. Actually, do not tax production of energy at all. Make it THE tax free enterprise. If we did that, the world would follow, and all the stupid wars over oil would be gone. We could then cut military, because we wouldn't be in every hell hole in the w
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I would argue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Remember the "and" part. Yes, we have abundant energy, but it's not cheap. My ability to get computations per dollar has increased many orders of magnitude in the last 30 years (or 60, but I'm not that old), to the level that my smartphone would have been the fastest computer in the world when I was born. Energy, on the other hand, is within an order of magnitude, the same cost: the real coal price is about the same as in 1800 (see: http://econbus.mines.edu/working-papers/wp201210.pdf [mines.edu] and that's externalizi
Re: (Score:3)
How about Nanotechnology and personal manufacturing with 3d printing?
Not really (Score:5, Interesting)
The only the silicon part of the revolution is slowing down. The software revolution has barely begun, especially after being set back ten years or so during the Microsoft dark ages. What the future holds can scarcely be imagined today. Think of it this way: we already have more processing available on a single, $50, add in card than a modest sized mammalian brain. It isn't our hardware that sucks, it's our algorithms.
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
I think our algorithms have sucked, but it hasn't mattered much until recently.
Now we are able to make vast amounts of data available easily, so it matters a lot more.
Processing power still has a long way to go, but figuring out HOW to make use of the data is currently more important than the speed at which we can do it.
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not clear that software is heating up as much as you propose. Most systems depend on vast foundation libraries, and commercial viability frequently depends on vast developer ecosystems. It is getting harder and harder over time to launch novel software stacks. As new computer programs depend on ever larger and more stable platforms, inertia naturally means that the rate of "real" change is less now than it was earlier in the evolution of computer programs.
I think it's perfectly fair to say that the computer revolution is slowing down. Even as people remain hard at work, and some metrics continue to climb as fast as ever, the different between a 16 KB home computer and a 16 MB home computer is extraordinary. The difference between a 16 MB system and a 16 GB system is really much smaller, even though the systems are separated by a factor of 1000x (for the sake of a simple argument, assume compute performance and storage capacity scale at a rate roughly equal to main memory.) A 16 MB 686 running Windows 95 has windows, icons, color graphics, a mouse. A 16 GB Sandy Bridge running Windows 7 has windows, icons, color graphics, a mouse. A user teleported some years in the future would have no problem accepting the faster system. A 16 KB system has a keyboard, text mode, built in BASIC, incredibly primitive graphics with limited colors. Moving from that to the 16 MB one would be a revelation.
We've seen massive consolidation of operating systems since the 80's. IT at this point is relatively stable and mature. Though, I don't agree that there were several completely distinct revolutions. I would argue that Facebook is part of the same revolution as the telegraph and radio. Likewise, computers are largely a technology of reliable small scale finely detailed manufacturing which started quite some time ago.
Re: (Score:3)
Progress didn't stop in 1995.
First there was the multimedia revolution. You can now capture audio, picture and video (even HD) content digitally, transfer it on a computer, edit it, and distribute it world wide, all on a (relatively) cheap PC. Try to do this on a 486.
Now you have smartphones packed with sensors, ubiquitous high speed internet access and web apps backed by massive datacenters.
And it is not just the hardware that improves. There have been tremendous improvements in recent years in fields like
Re:Not really (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll put a few caveats on what I was saying in the long term. If Strong AI happens, it will potentially be a fundamental shift in computing. But, I don't think we are really all that close to true strong AI. 20 Years is far enough out that I have no idea what the world will look like. But, I'd be really surprised if things are shockingly different in 2013 vs 2023. 2033 Will be the same distance in the future that 2013 is from 1993, and I'm much more willing to be surprised in that time frame.
Aside from Strong AI, one of the really disruptive technologies that I see moving forward will be AR. That's potentially a huge social game changer, but not really a technological one. Fully seamless, always-on, mature augmented reality will change the way people see the world around them. That will basically be a "new" software platform, and there will be a period of change that mimics recent history in mobile devices, or the 1980's in home computers. Some of the basic bits like OpenGL will probably be used off the shelf, but nobody has yet created a good AR programming environment, so I think some of the stuff like OpenGL won't be used directly, and we may potentially see brand new stacks. Sort of like when Apple created CocoaTouch and offered the first popular multitouch API. It was built on a lot of existing technology, but it still offered some interesting new capabilities. Android likewise created a new API for dealing with mulyitouch UI's which leveraged quite a bit of existing code (Linux kernel and such) but was clearly a new environment and platform to deal with. AR will provide a disruptive new space for developers to make new things, but from a pure technology standpoint, it won't be anything as significant as the social implications.
Whatever happens, in the near term after they are introduced, AR goggles and AI systems will still reference information services that live in 19" racks, with some sort of UNIX and TCP/IP involved. The data will be stored in hierarchical filesystems. It'll be secured with passwords and crypto keys. (And, cue the old story about how shuttle SRB's are the size that they are because they needed to fit on trains running on legacy rail infrastructure which is ultimately the same size as a Roman road because infrastructure never gets swept away in one go. It tends to hang around forever, so change is never as rapid as creation.)
Re:Not really (Score:4, Informative)
It takes a -company- like Microsoft to bring the PC to the unwashed masses and all the ancillary technology that goes along with it. And it had to be an open platform. IBM almost succeeded in keeping the PC platform closed in a way that Apple succeeded in. Below are some facts.
IBM and MS both worked on OS2, [wikipedia.org] which MS eventually named Windows NT. MS screwed their partner by introducing incompatibilities with OS2, as MS had done with DOS back when DR DOS was a competitor. IBM now advocates Linux. You're pretty far from the mark if you think it was MS that caused all the openness. It was Intel when they allowed "clones", for fuck's sake man. THINK.
Without a world of Microsoft.
1. GPUs wouldn't be as advanced today.
Why's that? OpenGL existed [tomshardware.com] DirectX was never really needed, it was just yet another proprietary MS standard to assist with vendor lock-in. MS doesn't make GPU hardware, but the vendors now had to support two drivers instead of one. That means more work for no good reason -- even if they make a good DX driver and skimp on the OGL one, that's still extra wheel spinning for no fucking reason. Why would MS not use OpenGL instead of wasting time on DX? The early versions of DX was an OpenGL wrapper. There must have been some reason for MS to embrace and extend... OH! Extinguish. I'd say that was a step backwards. We could have had one really awesome cross platform driver stack, but because of MS that didn't happen. This means your selection of Games is dependent on the OS you use, which is fucking retarded in every sense of the word -- It's bad for gamers, it's bad for game devs, it's bad for hardware makers, it's bad for everyone but.... Microsoft.
2. CPUs wouldn't be as advanced today.
What? No. MS didn't make CPUs better. Chip makers did. In fact, because of so much proprietary Windows market share, and resistance to architecture changes meant that the bloated x86 had to stick around FAR longer than it was actually needed. For fuck's sake man, we have interpretors on the chip just to emulate rarely used instructions! That's not an advance! That's Retardation!
3. Fuck it- **HARDWARE** wouldn't be as advanced as today.
I might give you this one just for the hell of it. It's blatantly wrong, but for the sake of argument, Windows consumes more cycles than BSD, Linux, and some OSX versions. The consumers had to buy new hardware to run the bloat ware... "and there was much rejoicing. yay"
4. You wouldn't have the Internet you're using today.
"The Internet is just a Fad", Bill Gates. Seriously, they were pushing some other proprietary bullshit networking standard. Their decade long lag with IE6, and non adherence to standards is the scourge of every the web designer. We'd have had the web we have now, but Sooner and FASTER without MS's browser shenanigans, i.e., w/o IE.
5. Smartphones wouldn't have advanced in technology because of all the aforementioned progress in fabrication R&D.
Hahah, no. My PDA wouldn't have gotten faster without MS's R&D? I don't think so. Even if I gave you this one too, the progress would have been made by someone else. If Alexander G. Bell would have died at birth, we'd have had the Telephone one hour later. We had incandescent bulbs two years before Edison figured out which gas to put in them, others were doing the same work, but he had more money -- Someone would have replaced the vacuum bulb with argon, there's only so many known elements. MS could have never existed and nothing of value would have been lost.
6. On and on and so forth....
Bitch, moan, and whine about Microsoft all you want. But most people are not techno
Gordon's Paper Question (Score:5, Informative)
Gordon's Paper has been thoroughly investigated [thebreakthrough.org] by Roger Pielke Jnr at the Breakthrough Institute.
Gordon's smoothing of growth fails to show the variability and creates a picture of trends that are not really there. A quote from the article linked above:
In short, there is no evidence of a stair step reduction in the growth rate of US per capita GDP in either dataset. The US BEA and Census data shows essentially no change (a linear trend, blue line, shows a statistically insignificant downward tick) whereas the Maddison data shows a bit of an increase (red line). The data is sensitive to the time period chosen – for instance, from 1970 the BEA/Census data shows an increase in the annual rate of per capita GDP growth. I can find no evidence of a post-1950 secular decline in per capita economic growth in the United States, and in fact, there is evidence that growth rates have accelerated a bit from 1970.
Re:Gordon's Paper Question (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA ... I'm not sure the poster did. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the link to Krugman's column: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/is-growth-over/ [nytimes.com]
And this means that in a sense we are moving toward something like my intelligent-robots world; many, many tasks are becoming machine-friendly. This in turn means that Gordon is probably wrong about diminishing returns to technology.
Ah, you ask, but what about the people? Very good question. Smart machines may make higher GDP possible, but also reduce the demand for people — including smart people. So we could be looking at a society that grows ever richer, but in which all the gains in wealth accrue to whoever owns the robots.
And then eventually Skynet decides to kill us all, but that’s another story.
Anyway, interesting stuff to speculate about — and not irrelevant to policy, either, since so much of the debate over entitlements is about what is supposed to happen decades from now.
Already Happening (Score:5, Interesting)
As a physician, I see the future, and it's increasingly moving away from me and towards the computer. There will still be a role for us, but it will be in the areas where big data doesn't come up the obvious answer. As humans, we suck at reliably following algorithms. For a lot of medical conditions, following an algorithm reliably will give much better results than the haphazard method in which it is practiced now. Let the computer do that and let us practice the art of medicine where we don't know the correct answer yet.
Not run its course - barely started (Score:4, Interesting)
The industrial revolution is driven by man's ability to harness energy. So far that's all been fossil fuel and has limited what we can do - and how fast we can do it.
That phase of the industrial revolution is still going strong and has nothing to do with electronics, electricity or computers. Those developments are a completely different strand of development, and (themselves) have barely started, either.
The next phase of human-kinds development is when we break out, past the limitations (both of availability and rate of generation) of fossil fuels into a new era where there is MORE energy available to each human. Probably several times more energy.
However, if you really want to talk about computers, then we're still in the pre-condensing boiler stage. We can make computing devices that seem pretty powerful (because we have nothing better to compare them with), but they're not particularly powerful, complex or scalable. Also, it's debatable whether there is anything on the horizon (quantum, possibly - but it seems to be a hellishly complicated way to do things and needs a lot of supporting structure, compared to, say, the human brain) to take us to the next phase.
So, no. We have NOT come to the end of IR3, we're still firmly stuck in the first industrial revolution, probably for another 50 - 100 years until we get our asses into gear and get past fossil fuels. Computing also seems firmly stuck on the bottom rung, with no promising technologies to move up, past the limitations of current semiconductor processors and logic-gate based architectures.
IR Dates all Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see, he cuts off IR#1 at 1830, which pretty much misses the entire steamship revolution and the invention of so many consumer goods of the 19th century, not to mention, the facilitation of mass immigration to the USA by all those steamships, the openning of the west due to practical railroads.
Then, he cuts off the next IR at 1900, and thus misses aircraft, the widespread adoption of the telephone and radio, and consumer appliances.
And then, having decided that aircraft, telephones, radio and steamships were useless, he says that the next 60 years of IT will mean absolutely nothing.
I would be inclined to think he is totally wrong.
Re: (Score:3)
we're still in the era of steam, for fossil fuel and nuclear plants and nuclear sea vessels.
1900 B.C. to present: era of algebra
1000 to present era of explosives
1450 to present era of mass media
1750 to present: era of steam
1870 to present: era of electricity, also of telephony
1900 to present: era of flight
1960 to present: era of space, also of integrated circuit
1970 to present: era of the internet
1975 to present, era of the personal computer
No work==good (Score:5, Insightful)
will robots put laborers and even the educated out of work?"
Let me remind people here that this is, in the long run, a good thing (TM). Machines putting people out of work enabled us to have, in the long run, the 40hr work week and a society where people are majoritarily middle class.
Short term it can be a disaster though. For example the 2nd industrial revolution caused massive unemployment in industrial England and leadto asinine ideologies such as fascism, luddism and socialism elsewhere. These ideologies were misguided attempts to compensate for this momentous labour force disruption by addressing the wrong aspects of the industrial revolution (democracy, machines and capital respectively).
Steam? Railroads? (Score:5, Funny)
So IR#1 = Steam, Railroads
IR#3 = Buying Railroad Tycoon on Steam.
IR #3 is actually IR #2, but a different "I". (Score:5, Informative)
The development of modern computing and telecommunications is not an industrial revolution of the type characterized by IR #1 and IR #2, and this is where Gordon's assumptions falter and Krugman's skepticism gains traction.
The "I" in this case refers to Information not Industry, and it is the 2nd one. The 1st one was the development of the printing press. From this standpoint, IR #1 (the printing press and movable type) took centuries for it's impact to be fully realized. The depth and breadth of it's influence on western civilization is difficult to measure in "simple" macroeconomic terms. Likewise, IR #2 (the electronic digitization of information) is a revolution that is so fundamental in nature that I don't believe it lends itself to being mapped as cleanly as Gordon implies.
Krugman starts the conversation in a couple of good spots: robotics and it's impact on GDP, and the potential of Big Data to drive decision making. What about desktop manufacturing (aka 3D printing)? MOOC? Genomics? Realtime translation?
In fact the more that I think about it, the more I think that Gordon has successfully found an important trend, but has the wrong story to explain it. The first two Industrial revolutions owe their economic impacts to advances in our energy metabolism as a species. Gordon's IR#1 was about the conversion of hydrocarbons into mechanical energy using steam. Gordon's IR#2 was about the conversion of hydrocarbons into electricity using steam turbines, and into mechanical energy using internal combustion. Economic benefits from the digital revolution has much more to do with efficiency and productivity, and almost nothing to do with finding new sources of energy to exploit. Indeed we're using more energy than ever to push information around, but each joule expended has had a significant ROI from an economic standpoint. Consider Just In Time [wikipedia.org] production techniques, which are dependent on the ability to rapidly gather and disseminate information up and down the manufacturing supply chain. There's not a whole hell of a lot more efficiency that we're going to wring out of JIT. In fact, Japan's Tsunami disaster demonstrated that we are now SO optimized from an industrial standpoint that natural disasters in one part of the world can have nearly immediate impacts across the global economy. In other words, we have reached the point of diminishing returns on the productivity gains that digital information can provide to the industrial economy.
So Gordon is wrong, but about the right things.
Gordon and Krugman, late and wrong (Score:4, Informative)
2) The second industrial revolution does not produce increased GDP in the form of steam engines until the 1840's by which time the telegraph is a major part of the information infrastructure to run railroads, so his IR#1, first, is really IR#2 and for most of the world is 1830-1860.
3) Much of the period of so-called IR#2 is during the long depression. As with previous waves of industrialization or technological revolution, city centers grow rapidly, as it is much cheaper per person to extend infrastructure, and there are higher profits. The electrical economy does not penetrate much of even developed countries, as measured by penetration of electrical devices and their costs, until 1930-1950.
4) In developed countries the rebound from WWII was the period of fastest GDP growth.
In productivity terms, the information revolution was not visible until the mid-1990s, and there are still large productivity wins.
Krugman is late to the party, and falls into the "lump of work" fallacy. The real problem here is that if there is a roughly constant standard of living as a target, the amount of work to be done will drop, and it will be less well paying. The only way to produce more work is to increase the demands on society. This will be opposed by those for whom the present standard is enough, and who enjoy its higher levels of benefit, but this is largely a political problem, for which political will is required. Economics can help ease transition forward, but it cannot generate political will from nothing.
Revolutions never come to a close (Score:4, Interesting)
I think IR #3 is a bit too nebulous and abstract to be useful... I can't imagine how you top "information age" or what could ever possibly come next.
Instead I think you really need to think in terms of a tech tree with more specific items such as cheap high density batteries, memristers, large scale 3d stacking / optical or plasmon gates, room temp superconductors, optical frequency fourier antennas, quantum computers with thousands of entangled qbits, tabletop fusion, warp drives..etc are likely to dominate the landscape of future changes vs general themes.
I think a mistake is made when you confuse the effects of diminishing first order returns on information and information processing technology from the more important secondary effects it has on the worlds industries and feedbacks on information technology itself.
For example faster Internet or a faster computer at this point would continue to provide ever diminishing returns to the average consumer.
Likewise the always connected mobile computers and communications provide limited little additional value over traditional fixed hardwired systems.
When you end your analysis with this narrow view of technology itself you are blind to what is really going on in terms of aggregate effects on all of industry.
All advances in pharmaceuticals / chemistry / material science is fully contingent on complex large scale computation.
Astronomy and basic research.
Computational biology and insanely cheap + fast sequencing is just now starting to go apeshit..
Automation in design, manufacturing and logistics of all kinds throughout all of industry.
Facebook, mobile phones, twitter and assorted consumer gadgets are red herrings... They are just noise that never really mattered.
Impact? (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure the full impact of the internal combustion engine wasn't known in 1900.
How about Windows 8? (Score:5, Funny)
I noticed a different pattern: (Score:3)
I once plotted all the major inventions by time, and didn't really see clustered causes, but did see clustered time areas of rapid innovation. I saw an expected bulge roughly around 1910, but I was surprised by the size of the invention bulge centered roughly around the 1950's, at least in terms of when they started impacted our lives (not nec. first creation).
The 50's "cluster" had these involved:
Atomic weapons
Electronic computer (mainframe)
Vaccines
TV
Jet travel
Transistor
Krugman...and (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no longer funny. Stop it, please. (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, that was maybe good for a chuckle the first time somebody pointed it out. But that was a long time ago. You don't need to trumpet this crap each time a headline contains a question mark. Just answer the question, without throwing out the too-obvious "Betteridge's law" reference. It's almost getting as bad as the stupid "obligatory XKCD" links that dipshits will post here.
Re:It's no longer funny. Stop it, please. (Score:5, Funny)
It's almost getting as bad as the stupid "obligatory XKCD" links that dipshits will post here.
I'm sure there is an obligatory xkcd link out there to better illustrate that.
Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Tax the robots at 70%
Then take that money, and funnel it into education, the arts, and a basic living wage to the masses.
Problems with people becoming breeding factories? Reduce the basic wage payments given for each child born over +2 by 50% then 75%, then nothing over 4.
With a higher level of education, our scientific advancement will increase, further increasing our wealth in general. Since the tax on robots leaves a 30% profit for the rich, they are rewarded for keeping the machines going. and paying for the administration of the machines to those who still earn a wage.
The formulas can be tweaked, should there be a new frontier opened up such as space, and money may in fact become only representations of pure resources and energy if technology such as a nano lathe becomes reality. (Being able to assemble anything from the atom up)
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Problems with people becoming breeding factories? Reduce the basic wage payments given for each child born over +2 by 50% then 75%, then nothing over 4.
That's only an acceptable solution if you're willing to starve children to punish their parents for overbreeding. Setting quotas with mandatory sterilization (reversable in case of death of a child) seems like it would be better at preventing overpopulation without also punishing children whose parents made bad decisions.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
Mandatory reversible sterilization of all children when they turn 12 years of age. Then let them undergo the procedure for free to reverse it after age 21 if they choose to do so. I will bet you that 90% will prefer to not have kids. Keeping young teens from ruining their lives by having kids is important, teens will hump like rabbits, it's in their nature. Lets not let them ruin their lives because a bunch of backwater uneducated hillbillies wont let the government give out birth control and educated kids in the use of birth control.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Mandatory reversible sterilization of all children when they turn 12 years of age. Then let them undergo the procedure for free to reverse it after age 21 if they choose to do so.
Dear God, I hope you're not serious! You'd let the government sterilize your child? If this law came in in my country, I'd be on the first to start the revolution.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Mandatory reversible sterilization of all children when they turn 12 years of age. Then let them undergo the procedure for free to reverse it after age 21 if they choose to do so.
Dear God, I hope you're not serious! You'd let the government sterilize your child? If this law came in in my country, I'd be on the first to start the revolution.
But you're ok with your young daughter and her boyfriend conceiving a child when their hormones override their common sense? Are you willing to take full financial responsibility for raising her child?
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it either/or and not neither/nor? I'd not be OK with that either. But given the choice, I think I'd rather help support a child born to a teenage mother or father than forcibly sterilizing my child during their teenage years.
Horny teenagers have been in existence for about as long as teenagers have existed. There also isn't any, to my knowledge, reversible sterilization where the initial sterilization has a reasonable certainty it will be successful and the reversal has an equal chance to be reversed.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, I had just turned 21 when my 18yo wife had her first son in 1980, he was no accident. Neither side of the family offered any kind of financial help and a tax break on fuck all is obviously less than fuck all. Having kids early ruined my finances, not my life, it gave life a purpose and bone-headed determination that non-parents have great difficulty understanding, I was no longer "working for the weekend" I was "putting bread on the table" and I was doing it the hard way, as a high school drop out. Neither of my kids followed their parents lead and dropped out of HS, and neither will my three grand kids.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Informative)
Horny teenagers have been in existence for about as long as teenagers have existed. There also isn't any, to my knowledge, reversible sterilization where the initial sterilization has a reasonable certainty it will be successful and the reversal has an equal chance to be reversed.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control/birth-control-shot-depo-provera-4242.htm [plannedparenthood.org]
99% effective when used as directed (one shot every 12 weeks), wears off and allows pregnancy after 6 - 10 months of no injections.
Re: (Score:3)
If I had to choose between forced sterilization and teenagers having children, I'd pick the latter. I'd vastly prefer not to give the government such abilities.
Re: (Score:3)
Birth control takes care of that nicely, and condoms have the secondary (primary?) benefit of disease prevention.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Informative)
With cheap and guilt-free access to contraception that happens seldom, where anti-choicers don't run amok, there's also the option of abortion for the rare cases where birth-control fails. In contrast "purity balls" and bullshit like that don't work. USA is the outlier among first-world nations:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_tee_pre_sha-health-teenage-pregnancy-share [nationmaster.com]
In USA, 22% of all 20-year-old females have given birth. The equivalent rate for Japan and Sweden are 2% and 3%. (and atleast for Sweden, most of -those- are conservative religious folks - drop that nonsense and the risk drops to sub-1% which is, if not ignorable, then atleast not a major reason for population-growth.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
1. free cellphone - not sure but program seems very limited, basically an emergency only phone
2. free money - very difficult to get cash assistance, especially long term, this is just false
3. free health insurance - only for kids usually, I don't see any problems with this even if it covers adults.
4. free food - have you tried living on food stamps, or making a meal with food pantry food, it's not fun
5. free housing - waiting lists are extremely long, housing is in undesirable areas with undesirable neighbors. If you start to get ahead you will be robbed.
Everything else you said is already against the rules and just needs to be enforced. It is in many places. The people in your area are lazy, corrupt, or both.
Having a bachelors degree is not spectacular feat or guarantee you will be able to support yourself. What is your point? You sound like a shollow jealous person, or to use more current vernacular, a hater...
Re: (Score:3)
Soon as that child becomes a parent our welfare system kicks in and they're eligible for free cellphone, free money, free health insurance, free food and free housing forever.
Not here in the US, not since 1996. None of what you said, quoted or not, is accurate here, and it hasn't been for a quarter of a century.
Re: (Score:3)
I just had one of my friends have a child...he is also quite possibly the dumbest person i know. I perosnally got him at 20 years old out of bed every morning and took him to high school to help his parents who were working 100% of the time to afford to deal with the crap that he put them through(they should ahve kicked him out, but other than that it actually wasnt their fault.).....3 months ago he just had a kid...I am so sorry for that child.
I would revolt FOR people like this getting sterilized. He is g
Re: (Score:3)
Or, you could, like, teach them how to use birth control?
Oh no, that'd be too simple
Re: (Score:3)
Or, you could, like, teach them how to use birth control?
Oh no, that'd be too simple
That ignores reality -- I have a relative that had a baby at 15 -- I outright asked her why they didn't use birth control (which was available to her for free at a school clinic). She said "Well, it was our first time, and he didn't want to use anything, so we didn't."
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
"... he didn't want to use anything, so we didn't."
She could have used the 'morning after' pill. Or gone on 'the pill' and made him wait 2 weeks. The problem with condoms isn't just their availability at the time of the sexual act.
Sure, there were other contraceptive options that she could have used, but she didn't, even though she knew where babies came from, and knew what her options were. Which is the point I was trying to make - despite plenty of education and availability of birth control, they chose to use nothing.
Note that the availability of the "morning after pill" and birth control pills to minors without parental consent depends on the state.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
You and the AC who first responded both seem to think that waiting into your 20s to become sexually active is 'natural', whereas it is anything but.
It is mildly entertaining (until one considers just how much influence such types still have in our society) to watch people rationalise circles round the simple fact that it is natural to want to breed when one becomes capable of breeding. This tends to happen in the early teens. In the good old days, you took care of this problem by marrying the kids off as soon as they were old enough to breed. Making your daughter wait until she was in her 20s was considered unnatural; you were wasting a large part of her useful breeding life. Sex apart from breeding was bad, because you needed to reproduce as much as possible.
These days, we have more than enough people; we no longer need to breed like rabbits just to maintain our survival as a species. Yet we as individuals still have the need to do so; it's hard-wired into us. I personally do not advocate either a return to marriage at age 13 or 14 being the norm or spending our young adult years suppressing an essential part of our natures as a solution to this dilemma. I happen to favour birth control as the default for anyone old enough to breed; Depo-Provera sounds like a good option as it lasts long enough that becoming pregnant is something that must be decided well in advance.
Re: (Score:3)
Not possible. We have an extremist group in the USA that will not allow birth control to be taught in schools or given to kids.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
The above horror stories of teens and idiots having children before they were ready are a classic example of 'multiple anecdotes does not equal data'. The idea is to turn the statistical curve, not solve all problems for everybody.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
Mandatory reversible sterilization of all children when they turn 12 years of age. Then let them undergo the procedure for free to reverse it after age 21 if they choose to do so. I will bet you that 90% will prefer to not have kids. Keeping young teens from ruining their lives by having kids is important, teens will hump like rabbits, it's in their nature. Lets not let them ruin their lives because a bunch of backwater uneducated hillbillies wont let the government give out birth control and educated kids in the use of birth control.
Yeah, I like your solution better -- but instead of free reversal of sterilization, prospective parents should have to show that they can financially support a child, successfully complete a parenting class, as well as complete a home study similar to what adopted parents go through. I went though a stricter screening to adopt a dog (who would otherwise face euthanasia) than the scrutiny faced by horny teens in the back seat of a car when they conceive a child.
This would dramatically reduce the world's population -- Within a generation or two, the world's population could be cut down to a much more sustainable level. The population could be prevented from dropping too low by offering increasingly higher economic incentives to encourage couples to conceive. With robots taking up the slack in labor and economic development, this could be a huge environmental win - better standard of living for everyone without any real sacrifice.
All would be perfect...until, of course, the machines realize that the humans are the real threat and seek to exterminate them. But we've all seen those movies.
Re: (Score:3)
Oddly enough, I think I find the idea of mandatory parenting classes/standards more disturbing then mandatory contraception. I shutter to think what kind of standards boards might exist to decide what 'proper' parenting might be..
While I am personally against the idea, as well, I don't think you should close your mind off so quickly or you might have the blinds drawn on other meaningful course of action if a window of opportunity presents itself!
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Oddly enough, I think I find the idea of mandatory parenting classes/standards more disturbing then mandatory contraception. I shutter to think what kind of standards boards might exist to decide what 'proper' parenting might be. Family law is a pretty horrible domain, and I have seen all sorts of things used as examples of why one parent or another should not have custody including 'improper' sexuality, religion, political allegiance, hobbies, career, relationship structures, lifestyle.. and the idea that such standanders could potentially leak in to deciding if you can even have a kid in the first place is kinda chilling.
My wife works at a subsidized (i.e. low income) preschool and you'd be surprised how few parents actually know how to parent. They do offer parenting classes (optional, but encouraged), and they don't touch on any of the controversial issues you're worried about, but cover basics like diapering, feeding/nutrition, what do to when the baby cries, how to cope when the baby won't stop crying, when to seek health care, other outside resources for help with parenting, etc. Yet every year, they still have to call child protective services to investigate at least one family due to child abuse, malnutrition, etc.
Parenting in modern society is not instinctive, is not always passed down from mother to child, and there are many skills that can be taught without offending most people's ideals (there will always be the fringe that object to any mention of breast feeding versus formula, corporal punishment, etc).
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
As a parent, I can tell you that I've found 90% of parenting to be "make it up as you go along." You can try to make a plan for what you will do if something happens, but 9 times out of 10 something else will happen to mess up those plans. It's the ultimate on the job training. Nothing prepares you for parenthood. (I shake my head sadly at people who say "I have a dog so I know what it's like to be a parent.") It's not for the feint of heart and it isn't easy.
Sadly, too many parents have a baby thinking it'll be easy/fun or thinking it will cement their relationship (if anything, it's a source of relationship stress). Then, when their parenthood fantasy is shattered, they find themselves with a crying, hungry, pooping bundle that they don't want the responsibility for.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Mandatory reversible sterilization of all children when they turn 12 years of age. Then let them undergo the procedure for free to reverse it after age 21 if they choose to do so. I will bet you that 90% will prefer to not have kids. Keeping young teens from ruining their lives by having kids is important, teens will hump like rabbits, it's in their nature. Lets not let them ruin their lives because a bunch of backwater uneducated hillbillies wont let the government give out birth control and educated kids in the use of birth control.
You do realize that if 90% of the population is sterile, then the remaining 10% would have to have no less than 10 kids each (not per family, mind you, per person, one for each person not having kids +1 for themselves, and extras since some will die young) merely to sustain the existing population? Yeah, that sounds like a fantastic idea... if you want your country to collapse in 20 years or so.
Besides which: forced government sterilization... for serious? Have you read A Brave New World? That's not meant as a guidebook, you know.
Re: (Score:3)
Mandatory reversible sterilization of all children when they turn 12 years of age. Then let them undergo the procedure for free to reverse it after age 21 if they choose to do so. I will bet you that 90% will prefer to not have kids. Keeping young teens from ruining their lives by having kids is important, teens will hump like rabbits, it's in their nature. Lets not let them ruin their lives because a bunch of backwater uneducated hillbillies wont let the government give out birth control and educated kids in the use of birth control.
You do realize that if 90% of the population is sterile, then the remaining 10% would have to have no less than 10 kids each (not per family, mind you, per person, one for each person not having kids +1 for themselves, and extras since some will die young) merely to sustain the existing population? Yeah, that sounds like a fantastic idea... if you want your country to collapse in 20 years or so.
Besides which: forced government sterilization... for serious? Have you read A Brave New World? That's not meant as a guidebook, you know.
With robots/automation taking over much of the menial labor (and economic development), then what's wrong with reducing the population of the USA from 300 million to 30 million over the next 50 - 60 years? If population grown continues as it is, the population of the USA will double over the next 50 years - does your town have room to house twice as many people as it does now? Can our farms feed them? Do we have enough energy to transport them and keep them warm? I don't know what the limit is or what the
Re: (Score:3)
does your town have room to house twice as many people as it does now?
Yes - because even in the crowded Northeast, there is a ton of empty land. The middle of the country is essentially empty.
Anyway, the US population would be going down if not for immigration. You don't need to sterilize. Birthrates are at an all-time low, even among immigrant populations - and parental age is at an all-time high.
Re: (Score:3)
says the person that is not a parent at all.... Raised successfully 3 kids. I saw how much sex is rampant in highschools and junior high schools. Kids hump like rabbits, and no matter how much education for birth control you give them yourself in spite of the backwater extremist hillbillies they still do stupid things because TEENAGERS DO STUPID THINGS!
And wow, you have some sexual issues, I can tell by the points you tried to make.
Re: (Score:3)
As counter, I have raise three daughters, who do not "hump like bunnies" and are virgins into their twenties,
Suuuuuuure they are. How would you know? I'm also a parent of several children. I'm a great parent, too, blah, blah, blah. I don't believe for a second that you can, without completely dominating their lives, know what they have done every evening for the past decade. Do you weekly check their hymens?
I can't know based on your post whether you are a good parent or not but you sure seem deluded. Based on your post, I'd guess that if your children are sexually active, you'd be the absolute last pers
Re: (Score:3)
You don't have to sterilize anyone or otherwise restrict anyone's rights in order to limit reproduction. What you have to do is respect the rights of women, and the women themselves. Make sure that women are free to get an education, own property, vote, control their own bodies, and all those other things men are often free to do. Just look at the birth rates in the countries that already do this, and look at the quality of life in those countries. For anyone bothered by abortion, the rates of that actually
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
There is an elegant way to solve the problem of the concentration of wealth issue to the exclusion of general society.
Tax the robots at 70%
Then take that money, and funnel it into education, the arts, and a basic living wage to the masses.
Problems with people becoming breeding factories? Reduce the basic wage payments given for each child born over +2 by 50% then 75%, then nothing over 4.
With a higher level of education, our scientific advancement will increase, further increasing our wealth in general. Since the tax on robots leaves a 30% profit for the rich, they are rewarded for keeping the machines going. and paying for the administration of the machines to those who still earn a wage.
The formulas can be tweaked, should there be a new frontier opened up such as space, and money may in fact become only representations of pure resources and energy if technology such as a nano lathe becomes reality. (Being able to assemble anything from the atom up)
Tax the robots? I do not pay my robots a salary.
Why use robots when there are unemployed? (Score:3, Insightful)
The real issue isn't robots taking jobs it is robots taking jobs when there are unemployed people. If everyone is employed you have to automate at least partially to increase productivity. So why is automation increasing while we have so many unemployed? The answer lies in the monetary system Krugman advocates which is a Central Bank making cheap credit available.
I worked as an engineer for a company that built automation equipment. When we did a study for a company to determine if it made sense to automate
Define "robot" (Score:3)
Tax the robots at 70%
What do you mean "robot"?
Is a Roomba a robot? Is a dishwasher a robot? What about a thermostat? There are so many ways that machine automate jobs, no one could possibly find a way to classify a machine as a "robot" or not.
Just FYI, there was a time early in the industrial revolution when steam engines didn't have mechanical valve actuators. There was a person with the task of opening and closing the intake and exhaust valves at the right times. In the sense that a job was eliminated by a machine, the camsha
Re:Silly idealist! (Score:5, Informative)
And even if it would, the rich will never abide huge taxes. They like being rich and intend to stay that way, and will not hesitate to use their wealth to achieve their political ends. Robin hood taxes will never fly, no matter how badly the lower classes want it.
The tax rate for top earners in 1940 was 78%, so they've abided it before.
Re:Silly idealist! (Score:4, Insightful)
Every recession in the last 80 years or so has been marked by the US top marginal tax rate falling to a low, right before the attendant stock market crash.
The GFC was preceded by US top marginal tax rates being the lowest they've been at any point in history.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't buy into Krugman's presupposition that "robots taking jobs" is evil. Robots are viable only to the extent that they increase productivity. It is PRODUCTIVITY that creates wealth and abundance, not jobs.
Robots can bring wealth, the question is to whom? Robots taking jobs is not automatically evil, but robots taking jobs is not automatically good either. It depends on what happens with the wealth.
If you think robots taking jobs is automagically good, just take the current world and assume the Chinese/Indian/Vietnamese/etc workers are "robots", and the US workers are "humans". So how well is the current plan working out for the "humans"? Is it all fine and well? Most of the stuff those Chinese workers do are the very jobs the robots will start to do first.
If many US humans aren't doing well competing with the Chinese humans, what are they going do when the Chinese humans themselves can't compete with the Chinese robots?
So don't treat all that "buggy whip" stuff as religion.
If we manage it well, perhaps we'd only have to work a day a week like in the Jetsons ;). Or maybe not even have to work unless we wanted to.
If we don't, it's not going to be so great.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
If we don't, it's not going to be so great.
If you've got the money to invest, I guess I'd put it on "not so great". Then it's a beautiful world, for you. But not for me.
Re:Easy way to solve robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
There will come a time when robots and computers can handle all of our needs, and many of our wants without us needing to do the work. Eventually there is no reason why any person will need to work. Unfortunately, the way things are set up now when something is done more efficiently due to technology, the added profit goes to the top, and the no longer required worker gets a pink slip and no income. How we manage a transition from a jobs based economy, to a post-scarcity society will be very interesting.
You put it very well.
If we manage it well, perhaps we'd only have to work a day a week like in the Jetsons ;). Or maybe not even have to work unless we wanted to.
If we don't, it's not going to be so great.
Unfortunately my suspicion is that it will be managed "not going to be so great" until it gets so bad that we end up with outright revolution and war. After which the eventual end result will probably be much more like the good sci-fi writers predicted, with no work needed and humans free to pursue arts and exploration, knowledge, and the betterment of themselves.
The good news is that the end result will likely be quite good, and that we probably have a good bunch of years yet before we hit bottom, the bad news is that I just can't conceive of any likely way to get from where we are now, to where we need to be without going through a very dark period indeed, one which could last a very long time.
Re: (Score:3)
There will come a time when robots and computers can handle all of our needs, and many of our wants without us needing to do the work. Eventually there is no reason why any person will need to work. Unfortunately, the way things are set up now when something is done more efficiently due to technology, the added profit goes to the top, and the no longer required worker gets a pink slip and no income.
Unfortunately my suspicion is that it will be managed "not going to be so great" until it gets so bad that we end up with outright revolution and war.
Indeed. We already see how corporate America, the American Second Estate (the plutocrats who substitute for the nobility of pre-revolutionary France), and their political agents are dealing with this developing scenario.
A decent share of the growth in worker productivity over the last 40 years has been, for the first time in American history, withheld from the workers so that their real wages are unchanged over an entire working lifetime, while health care and education costs have exploded, leaving average
Re:It's no longer funny. Stop it, please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ad Hominem? (Score:5, Insightful)
At a certain level understanding of economics leads inevitably to an ethical imperative for political activism, or being a jerk by letting things go to hell without doing anything about it. By the way, the idea isn't his: he's just playing a riff off of Robert J. Gordon's essay. Now that I'm done with your ad hominem, I may as well comment on the fine article.
In enterprise systems design we've been running out of real problems for about four years. Once you integrate virtualization, modern 10Gbps or faster networks, multicore processors, vast RAM and SSD I/O you're down to working around glitchy legacy software and interpreting the niceties of licensing agreements. The premium names still draw premium prices for these things, but in 2013 that ends as almost all of the redundancy and reliability they provided to justify the premium is replaced with software redundancy on commodity hardware, as happened in SANs over two years ago. Every year the fraction of businesses that need exactly three geographically isolated physical servers grows. You need "big data" or "HPC" problems to find a hardware bone with meat on it still, and those are coming more rare than the people who solve this sort of problem. There are only so many of Twitter, Facebook and CERN. This probably means a career change for me and many others as we become redundant, so I'm not exactly thrilled with it but it is what it is.
Desktops and laptops have been "good enough" with great software for over seven years, or old software for four or five. Sure, gamers still buy premium systems - as do high-end engineers and others with special needs. But drilling down into system specs to deliver the best cost/benefit ratio for an office worker or typical home browser? No. You can buy a PC with 32GB of RAM, a 6-core processor and decent GPU at Costco for next to nothing. You literally can't get it wrong. Or you can SSD upgrade the one you have already, and blow the dust out and it will do what you need until the electrolyte in the capacitors gives out. The computer in your pocket has far more processor and storage than most people would need. It needs the screen size, but you can attach some of them to any HDMI monitor or 1080p HDTV now for a bigger screen and as many pixels as your laptop or desktop has. That smartphone would have been considered a supercomputer not so long ago, and quite a good PC later even than that. Laptop makers could probably sell one more trip around the upgrade treadmill by offering 4K resolution and touchscreen capability. Probably a half-lap actually.
So yes, the growth in tech is over at least in the US. With each generation of innovation the people who need or want it grow more scarce. It's diminishing returns. Sooner or later it ends.
Experts are still needed to wrangle this hardware into a usable state as the software situation is dire and redundant networking remains an occult science. Crudware is inscrutably still a problem. Security and services are still viable markets. But as far as getting any more utility from faster processors, more RAM, faster storage, better batteries and so on... not so much. Mobile devices are where it's at now, and they're disposable. TV repairmen had this problem too, once upon a time.
This is going to be an unpopular post as well as TL;DR and will probably moderated to death. I'm OK with that. But it's true. For most people and situations computation has come "good enough" for quite some time and is now well into overkill. Like improving the iPad display past "retina" resolution there is no true further progress to be had if further improvement is beyond our ability to perceive the difference. Moore's Law made it all the way to The End.
Re:Paul Krugman (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying the Nobels aren't political? I've nothing against Obama but awarding him the peace prize before he'd even done anything was a very clear political statement.
Mr Krugman is an Economist not to be dismissed (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying the Nobels aren't political? I've nothing against Obama but awarding him the peace prize before he'd even done anything was a very clear political statement.
While I agree that awarding President Obama the Nobel peace prize before he had been in office long enough to accomplish anything was a bit emberrassing (for all parties, I suspect), that has nothing to do with what he was saying. He was saying in effect, that some right-wing wingnut with "socialism is slavery" as their signature line dismissing Paul Krugman as a political hack and only an economist as a 'distant second' is misinformation at best, and given the track record of the American right in recent years, probably closer to an outright lie. Krugman may be politically active, but having won the nobel prize for economics, he is most certainly an economist of note, whose opinions are worth considering whether or not we personally agree with them.
And by the way, as one who lived many years in countries with socialized medicine, as well as in the United States, I would say the system in America, where your health is tied directly to your employment status, is much closer to slavery than any of western European "socialist" systems, but I digress.
Re:Mr Krugman is an Economist not to be dismissed (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, Krugman's Nobel prize was awarded for destroying a "straw man" argument. Again, politics degraded the prestige of the award.
I've read every one of Krugman's books, and it baffles me how a supposedly well-educated person can come up with this stuff. (I read a LOT of Economics books, and it isn't just Krugman, unfortunately.) I strongly object to him stating that he is going to use Economic reasoning to make a point, then substitute, ex-cathedra, some political justification that cannot be supported by the argument.
Here is where I'm coming from:
First of all, I assume six rules of General Semantics (as simplified by Ken Keyes, Jr In his book,"Taming your Mind" http://www.amazon.com/Taming-Your-Mind-Ken-Keyes/dp/0960068872/ref=sr_1_53?ie=UTF8&qid=1356574942&sr=8-53&keywords=ken+keyes+jr).
The rules are:
"Up to a point" (Assumes that nothing is absolute; that things are true, false, black, white, etc., Up to a point at which the assumption no longer holds.)
"To me" (Assumes that there is a personal dimension to the formation of every opinion, and the interpretation of every fact.)
"As far as I know" (Assumes that there is a limit to the amount of knowledge about anything, and any opinon is only valid subject to the discovery of further evidence.)
And, "What", "When" and "Where" indexes (Assumes that any topic or opinion is mutable in meaning, depeding on context.)
I also place arguments into categories:
Economic Philosophy (arguments about what Economics should be)
Economic Science (arguments derived from observation, logic, statistics, etc.)
Economic Technology (arguments describing how to achieve specific Economic results)
The only arguments that really interest me fall into the Science category, but you need to be aware of the influencing other two categories in order to evaluate them.
In Krugman's case, his Philosophical stance is "left-of-Keynes/pro-Socialist". If you evaluate his arguments from the point of view that this is correct, then his arguments hold water in most cases. However, modern Science shows Keynes and Socialism to have deleterious effects on the smooth functioning of economic behavior. It takes much intervention to make the technological results appear, and they are usually only temporary. Modern Economists have figured out that Keyenes' "General Theory" is, in fact, a very limited "special theory". To make it work (or to get the "desired" results) requires intervention of the sort that interferes with personal liberty and free choice. This mis-allocates resources and diminishes wealth and prosperity.
Since Krugman is no dummy, I have to assume that he is aware of all this and his insistence on forwarding flawed solutions is based on his political beliefs rather than Economics. It is immoral to borrow legitimate authority in one area and use it for a personal agenda to the detriment of others (IMO), and that puts Krugman in category of "Liars" and "Con men" as far as I am concerned.
Re:Mr Krugman is an Economist not to be dismissed (Score:5, Interesting)
However, modern Science shows Keynes and Socialism to have deleterious effects on the smooth functioning of economic behavior.
Exactly what evidence do you have of that?
Consider that there is not insignificant evidence that your "deleterious effects" (which I notice are not defined anywhere) simply aren't there. For example, European countries that have cut government spending have seen unemployment rise, sometimes precipitously, exactly as Keynes predicted.
Another thought for you: What would have happened if the US government had, instead of paying out billions in unemployment benefits, instead paid out billions to repair highway bridges or build a high speed rail network?
Re: (Score:3)
See, the problem you are faced here is that you apparently subscribe to sound-bite economics.
"For example, European countries that have cut government spending have seen unemployment rise, sometimes precipitously, exactly as Keynes predicted."
Your example, in this case, does not follow through with the thought: if governments cut spending, of course the people who rely on government spending (be it welfare, employment, or subsidiary employment) will be impacted; you would need to cut spending AND cut taxes,
Re: (Score:3)
Your example, in this case, does not follow through with the thought: if governments cut spending, of course the people who rely on government spending (be it welfare, employment, or subsidiary employment) will be impacted; you would need to cut spending AND cut taxes, while opening up trade barriers, and ensuring that enforcement of beneficial laws is top notch; then you may call upon the private sector to place those people in positions in which they will, arguably, be both more efficient and better paid. Failure, on any of those parts, will naturally result in failure of the whole.
You're missing the entire point of Keynes' argument:
1. Say, for the sake of argument, that there's a shiftless layabout Larry who survives off of a total government welfare payment of $1000 a month.
2. According to your policy, we should now cut that welfare payment to $0. (GDP - $1000)
3. Now, the thing is, Larry used to pay his landlord Lonny $650 in rent (either directly or through some kind of subsidy program). But now Lonny has had his income dropped by $650, so he has to cut his spending to match. (GDP
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That is... not true, at least for Poland. I happen to live there, you see, and health insurance does not expire with unemployement benefits. It is tied to unemployed *status*, not benefits, and as long as a person is registered as unemployed, they have their health insurance paid by the State, whether they are still eligible for the benefts or not.
Re: (Score:3)
You're right, but it's slowly getting better in the U.S. The insurance lobby, understandably enough, is hard at work in turning "Obamacare" into a monster in a dark closet. Of course the real reason is that their batshit insane profiteering would be cut a bit precisely by further limiting exclusions due to pre-existing conditions.
There's no problem in paying for individual health care insurance in the U.S., although it's not cheap since the insurers have no guarantee that you'll stay with them (or at least
Re:Paul Krugman (Score:4, Insightful)
The Peace Prize, the only one awarded from Norway by Nobel's wishes is highly political due to the retards in the committee who think it should be awarded as an incentive to act in its spirit instead of a recognition of actual accomplishment. It's no coincidence that the EU got the prize now as relations between many of the members are heavily strained and not 5 years ago when it was all flowers and sunshine. Unfortunately this has lead to many embarrassing awards when the recipients don't do anything worthy of the prize, or even contrary to it. It has been more than suggested that the recent awards to Obama and EU is ass kissing to further some of their member's international political careers. The committee currently consists only of ex-politicians, lead by a former prime minister. The other Nobel prizes awarded from Sweden are much, much less political.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Is there a Nobel Prize in Economics!?
That's news. When did the undead Nobel return from his grave to create it?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't have a problem with the fact that his views differ from mine. I have a problem with dishonesty of a Nobel prize winning economist who misuses his column to push his own political agenda. It's easy to google many instances of deliberate twisting of facts and outright lies ("ACA will decrease rather than increase the deficit"), all without exemption leaning in the same political direction. If he was on MSNBC or Fox News it would be no problem. It is the pretense that his writing is a serious economic
Re:Paul Krugman (Score:5, Insightful)
who misuses his column to push his own political agenda.
He writes a column in the Opinion Pages of the New York Times. Pray tell how exactly he's misusing them by pushing his own political preferences in the opinion section?
Your comment would have some validity if he were writing in the Science or Economics section, but he ain't. And this is even before we go into the fact that most of his political opinions are the logical consequence of his economic beliefs to the best of his academic ability.
As the GP said, you are really taking issue with his opinions not matching yours and simply trying to disguise them as a high level objection on non-existent grounds.
Re:Paul Krugman (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention defending Obamacare as a cost saving program,
Which it is. There is nothing as inefficient as the current system we have. We pay twice as much as any other country in the world for no better outcome.
openly lying about Ryan's voucher program
The only person lying about Ryan's program was Ryan, since it wasn't even a program. There were unspecified massive cuts in his program, the equivalent of the slashdot 1)... 2)... 3)??? 4) Profit!
Surprisingly the press fell for it much as you did too, with no one questioning what exactly step 3) would consist of. Krugman speculated that it would consist of massive cuts to social programs and thus indeed kill people, if we were to take Ryan at his word.
He has zero credibility left except perhaps with deluded dailykos crowd.
He provides confidential advice to governments all over the world, has a column in one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world, is a professor in one of the best universities in the country and is the winner of the Nobel prize of economics. Yeap, I can see the zero credibility all over the place.
deluded dailykos crowd.
You are projecting here. You might disagree with everything he says, but the dude has credibility up the wazoo.
For example, I think Alan Greenspan. is a hack and at least 50% responsible for the current mess we are in (Bush being the other 50%) but I have no problem admitting that the guy's opinion still carries a lot of weight in many circles. More than I wish it did, but that's tangential to the point.
You on the other hand don't seem to be able to make the simple distinction between what you wish the world was and what it is. Hence you delude yourself into believing that Krugman is irrelevant.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't have a problem with the fact that his views differ from mine. I have a problem with dishonesty of a Nobel prize winning economist who misuses his column to push his own political agenda. It's easy to google many instances of deliberate twisting of facts and outright lies ("ACA will decrease rather than increase the deficit"), all without exemption leaning in the same political direction. If he was on MSNBC or Fox News it would be no problem. It is the pretense that his writing is a serious economic analysis distilled for popular reading rather than obvious and automatic pushing of a political agenda regardless of the facts that bothers me.
If you weren't completely wrong you'd have a point. His economic analysis is actually pretty spot-on, happens to agree pretty closely with the Democrats, and you just disagree with it. It's basic on sound economic theory (which differs from yours). And the ACA does decrease the deficit compared to the previous status quo.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he still thinks he can pull that off. But the Fed chairman's crystal ball has been cloudy lately; remember how he urged Congress to cut taxes to head off the risk of excessive budget surpluses? And a sober look at recent data is not encouraging.
- NYTimes, 2002 [nytimes.com]
By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.
Red herring.com (1998) [archive.org]
If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. There was a Twilight Zone episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time, we don't need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.
Paul Krugman: Fake Alien Invasion [huffingtonpost.com]
In July 2008 Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) "didn't do any subprime lending, because they can't: the definition of a subprime loan is precisely a loan that doesn't meet the requirement, imposed by law, that Fannie and Freddie buy only mortgages issued to borrowers who made substantial down payments and carefully documented their income." (New York Times, July 18, 2008)
How did Krugman get i [realclearmarkets.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Is that the best you can do? There's nothing wrong with the first quotation or the third. The second prediction was made in in 1998, for God's sake. Good thing you posted as an AC: how many incorrect predictions have you made?
Fair enough.
Still, the second prediction is worth quoting in full. The premise "Most people have nothing to say to each other..." is so near, and yet so far, from web 2.0 that it's just delicious. To be able to say something so wrong (in hindsight) is an achievement beyond most of us. It must rank with the all time great failed predictions.
Re:Paul Krugman (Score:5, Informative)
He's also a former adviser to Enron [wikipedia.org].
Take from it what you will.
Re: (Score:3)
You don't need robot repair men, Robots can fix robots. You just need to build the first one from scratch, then you've put yourself out of a job.
Re: (Score:3)
Dude, that frees humans up for other stuff. If we become a totally decadent society, then it frees us up to watch TV and play video games all day.
Though, at some point, the robots may acquire sentience, at which point it's going to be "interesting." Especially the part where we get accused of being slave-masters, as a race, and put on trial or something. I'd personally recommend putting in some shims in our laws for that eventuality, and preparing for the possibility that we may need to come up with a total
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
To quote a very old British Telecom advert: "People will always need plates".
To suggest that automation is the end of the line for human input is ridiculous. If anything, there are MORE jobs per person now than there ever have been. In fact, the US makes a substantial proportion of its GDP from products made from within prison walls - which tells you a lot about manual labour, and why the US likes to lock people up more than just about any country in the world.
The jobs will change, of course, but when th
Re:hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
I have always found the idea of technological revolutions being restricted to specific timeframes interesting. It is mostly a bunch of bullshit created by people who excessively attempt to categorize things. Notice how his time periods for the revolutions don't include: Bessemer process, refrigeration, antibiotics, polymers (e.g. nylon), jet engine, solar cells, nuclear power, etc. Do you honestly think transatlantic flight was less an important transportation achievement than steam ships? The mind boggles.
Another example is the period formerly known as the Dark Ages or Middle Ages. Crop rotation, wind mills, boats with a keel like longships and knarr, glass lenses, gunpowder, compass, paper currency, etc are all seemingly trash for these people. You often hear flamethrowers were invented in WWI. The truth is people were fighting with flamethrowers back in the Crusades during the Middle Ages.
Re: (Score:3)
In the context of 1870 - 1900, no I didn't mean WiFi. I meant radio, invented by David Edward Hughes in 1879.
Re:Krugman (Score:5, Interesting)
You should probably read the article. Krugman is not saying these things, Gordon is. Krugman disagrees with him.