Social Security 24%
Health Care 25%
Safety Net Programs 10%
Benefits for Retirees 8%
Social programs according to this consist of 67% of the total budget.
Where is the money going to come from?
Also, you know what happened to France when they hiked up their Tax rates? They moved to London. Where did the Russians go? They moved to London. Where did the Greek millionaires/Billionaires go, probably London.
The rich in the US have already started making plans on where to go, there are a lot of places for them to live.
If you think Basic Income is going to be the solution. I'm very sorry to tell you. It's not!
This sort of article should really serve as a wake up call to this community.
There was another article here recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12329255, where some comments mentioned that people should retrain once jobs become available for consistent automation.
Typically immigrants do this work, low educated immigrants. They do it because they can't get any other work in higher skilled professions. Sure they could be a driver, oh wait soon that will be autonomous. They could work in a warehouse, oh wait Amazon is doing it's best to disrupt that. They could be a cleaner? Oh wait, companies like Roomba and Dyson are working to disrupt that.
The point I'm trying to make here, is for all the poorly/low educated people and lets be really, seriously honest are in the tens of millions. What are they going to do?
I've traveled all over the world, all the continents. There are segments of the population that can't read, can't write, can't even grasp basic maths. They are the ones who depend on these low end jobs.
Are you going to tell me with a straight face they they can re-train, go back to school and work in STEM? It's just not feasible. Also, who is going to pay for all these millions to retrain for years. Remember, they'll probably have to restart their education, basic maths, basic science, then college, then university. That's what 7 years? Who will pay for their living expenses for them and their family?
There is a ticking time-bomb coming soon. Where we'll have an OMEGA man type of situation. All sorts of jobs will be automated and people won't have anything to do.
What are the solutions?
1) Do we implement 1 child per couple policy? To lessen the burden on the state?
2) Do we provide free schooling with a zero-tolerance on NO child left behind? So that they can go on to STEM fields?
3) Are there enough places in STEM fields for those who do retrain to move into? Is this another thing for government to throw money at?
4) Does society move from a capitalist to a socialist/communist system? But what happens when government runs out of money?
What are we going to do?
Just saying people will retrain is just utter folly.
There is a time-bomb ticking and some of you just don't realise it.
Want to know the result of no jobs, low educated populous, government with no money, socialism failed. Oh yeah. Greece. How's that doing for the last 10 years? It will be like that for another 25.
I'm sorry. I'm not PC, I'm not Millennial, I'm Gen-X.
I was brought up to think about the concept: the best person for the job. The BEST. If I were to hire someone now, I couldn't care less where they were born, what language they spoke, what colour they were, what gender they were, what hobbies they like or gasp political leanings.
Does anything of what I mentioned contribute to how they could perform? NO!
What does? How effectively they are able to actually perform in the job.
I will NOT be pressured by society or anyone else to fill quotas.
I think someone said it best in Twitter. Diversity does not mean lowering the bar.
If you want more of a certain group of people to be in a certain profession. Then make it attractive to them to be interested in it ALSO make them work hard to have the skills so that an employer would hire them on the SPOT!
Let me tell you something. I have worked with some amazing female developers. In my book? I'd hire them over a guy any day, especially when it's coupled with analytical skills.
Seriously. I wish this forced diversity thing would just die. No one company should work hard, it's the other way around. Want to get into a company, work hard and get into it yourself!
> No one said that all drop shippers, or even the majority of drop shippers, are doing anything illegitimate.
Yes, but STRIPE are saying this. Because it's in their prohibitive items list and if you do it as part of your business, they will not do business with you. This is my whole point.
Other merchants will happily do business, so why not stripe? They have yet explained why...
Here come the down votes from developers who hold Stripe into such esteem. That's right, if a business does not fit your view of a "business" then they must be a scammer.
Go live outside of your SF/SV bubble and see how it works in the real world!
Sorry, but this is flat out wrong. I had a protracted exchange with your support and unfortunately I could not get past your first level support who and I do mean this harshly, sounded like they didn't pass first year business school.
I tried to speak to a manager who actually had a clue with business and was denied. In fact, I was pushed from pillar to post and spoke with 6 different people from the first tier support team.
It was at this point, I thought stripe was some fly by night operation, not garnering the level of praise that technical people here on hackernews were giving. Definitely not.
I think in future, should someone present you with a case that falls outside your remit. But is willing to do whatever it takes to work with you. You give them the benefit of the doubt and at least try to help them. In my case, you did not and that's not really great. In fact, you turned me into an enemy who went out to his community and turned a lot of people off you and onto your competitors.
I run a business where I regularly do between 50-100k a month. There are many other marketers that I know who are also doing the same.
I was not a good candidate and neither were they. Why? Because we act as middle-men between a product creator and the end user.
To someone like stripe, we are scammers. We supposedly put up sites which lie about products, we mark-up pricing and we take the money and not ship out the products. Yes, that is the brush that is tarred amongst all of us.
This could not be further from the truth, as it if was, then we'd be getting charge-backs up the wazzoo and our current merchant providers wouldnt be working with us.
I have yet to recieve a single charge back and I have many many repeat sales. So much so, that I an creating a brand by selling other manufacturers products under my own white-label brand. Which incidentally is against stripes terms and conditions.
What is laughable, is that stripe had no idea about my business model. In fact what they offered was stripe connect and having the manufacturer owning the stripe account. Which would actually confuse my clients even more.
Here is the deal. A lot of manufacturers don't know how to market. They don't know how to setup a sales funnel, market for clients, generate sales, make products go viral and generate 100k of sales. They have tried themselves spending $10k in marketing stacks and spending $1000s on facebook ads and getting nowhere.
But no, Stripe does not want to work with me or others like me. So guess what. We tell everyone one can, DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH STRIPE.
I don't be doing business with them and I will be telling all my clients and be sure to tell everyone they know as well not to do business with Stripe either. I hope this has a knock on effect that 1000+ individuals who thought about using stripe, use someone else as well.
If only stripe had actual controls where they did reputation testing against IP, actually sided with the seller on charge backs instead of bending over and making the seller the bad guy, or do more fraud analysis.
I choose other vendors who do exactly this and I have had no problems so far.
Here's something. I'm not a scammer. I would rather lose a sale rather than trying to get that money and have someone have buyers remorse and do a charge back or demand refund.
Not all of us want to make a quick buck at all costs. There are other ways of doing this, believe me and STRIPE wouldn't be a way of doing it. That;s just laughable.
If that doesn't work, just pay more tax like a good boy and put them on basic income!
Hilarious!