The market doesn't capture and represent all value created by labor. When I call a tow truck to jump start my car, that transaction is captured by the market, but when I call my friend with cables to do the same thing, it is not represented in the GDP. The same thing goes for a lot of "work" that is not done for compensation but adds a great deal of value to community. Basic income recognizes this fact that merely existing as part of a community you are providing some basic value even if you're not paid for that work. I think the critics are right that there are potential cultural problems around entitlement and an unwillingness to contribute in any form, but I'm more optimistic about human nature.
The EITC and a basic income are actually very similar in effect. The difference is largely in the mechanism of distribution. With a basic income, every citizen gets a check every month. With an EITC you get it in a lump with your tax refund, if you qualify for it.
Yeah, I got a red light ticket there. My court date got postponed to more than a year after the original infraction. The cops like to pick off cyclists along the north side of Flushing because cyclists will (quite rationally) run those lights -- there is no crossing auto traffic (bike lanes run along the top of T intersections) and very low volume (and easy to see) pedestrian traffic. Sucks.
There is plenty of "work" that happens outside of the labor market. Some days I pay a babysitter to take care of my daughter; other days my wife has off instead and does the same job.
Once, my battery died and a paid a tow truck for a jumpstart. Another time, I was able to call a friend to get a jump instead. Both times the same service was provided.
The last time I moved, I paid movers to haul boxes. The time before that, my brother and I did the work.
Money in exchange for labor isn't the only way useful work gets done and counted. Some things will still get done even when people aren't paid to do them.
Yes, there are a number of voluntary, tax-privileged retirement savings options, some of which may only be provided by employers, but not all employers provide (e.g. 401k/403b).
Yes, but MADD and other interests have pressured the federal government to set the age to 21 via highway funding, so states are constrained from deviating.
Haven't posted a formal listing yet (will edit later) since this just opened up today.
We're for a strong back-end web engineer to join our small, distributed tech team building two large (combined audience > 15 million uniques/month) consumer-facing web sites. Ideally:
Can major hub airports handle 4x the traffic of smaller planes vs large planes (I honestly don't know)? In the NYC area, in particular, air traffic congestion is a huge problem so "adding more flights" is not a practical option (unless those flights can be stacked more densely).
There have been many solutions proposed to this problem (usually expanding smaller, "nearby" airports) but it seems to me a better option would be to expand and improve regional passenger rail to reduce demand for short and medium-leg flights thus freeing capacity for longer distance flights.
Actually, yes. Just like advances in agricultural technology lead to job destruction in agriculture. We went from a majority of the global human population working in agriculture to a tiny minority in a few centuries. That labor was largely absorbed into industrial manufacturing. Manufacturing jobs have also been destroyed by automation (e.g., why a growing manufacturing sector in the US is not adding new net manufacturing jobs). The service sector has absorbed much of that labor, but on the low end, those jobs tend to be much more poorly paid and stable (which explains no income growth for the bottom 80% of the US population in 30+ years, despite a growing economy). Computers and automation are starting to eliminate service sector jobs as well (and not just on the low end). It isn't clear which "sector" will absorb this new labor unlocked by growing productivity, but it is clear to see how these change can create a growing economy but also growing inequality which can lead to a less pleasant society overall...
> so a legal drug like alcohol is actually causing havoc in society, as you so vehemently point out... and you are advocation MORE drugs be made legal?
Yes, because making alcohol illegal actually made things worse in the very same ways strict drug prohibition creates vast revenue streams for organized crime and incurs a great deal of violence.
The medallion system is certainly far from optimal and a different regulatory regime that allows for innovation while still addressing concerns around impact on traffic (public roads=classic tragedy of the commons case) and passenger safety would be widely welcome. It could certainly improve the customer experience on many axes (quality, availability, timeliness, cost, etc) though I'm skeptical it would do much to improve the lot of the average driver. Taxi driving is a relatively low skill field, so there wouldn't be much incentive for these new ride sharing companies to treat drivers any more fairly than they are currently treated, since drivers will need to work for whichever companies have the largest market share of potential fares.
This is my only complaint about Linode. We run our one stack that requires a lot of storage on EC2 and use EBS (and we might consider moving to just leasing real hardware in the future, since that is more straightforward & cheaper than EC2+EBS).
* Senior Web Engineer (Rails) * Graphic Designer * Product Manager
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/jobs