It is that time of year again: time to write about Black Friday. Yesterday, my wife came across a video contrasting Black Fridays in the '80s with Black Fridays now. The difference is huge. Thirty years ago, there was not some frenzied rush to get to the stuff first. There was no brawling, shoving, or snatching items from other people's carts. In fact, it looked like any normal shopping day, except with around five times as many people. Modern Black Fridays are actually dangerous, and people have died in the rush to get marginally good deals nearly every year for the last decade (a recent study has shown that Black Friday deals are not typically the best you can get).
The average American is Christian, according to polls. Christians should, according to The 10 Commandments and other Biblical passages, be generous, respectful, kind, charitable, and a host of other virtuous things. Christians should not be greedy, rude, mean, or otherwise harmful to others. In the 2013 movie, The Purge, the government mandates one almost entirely lawless day each year (there are some exceptions, mostly with regards to the safety of high ranking government officials and ordnance or explosive weapons). The unofficial goal of this is population control, though the government does not admit to it. Anyhow, in the movie, normally good people do or attempt to do completely horrendous and evil things during the yearly purge. This is what Black Friday is becoming. People who profess to be good Christians (or other denominations that have similar values), and who act like good Christians, the rest of the year turn into evil, conniving jerks on Black Friday.
I want to compare the events of Black Friday to another kind of completely immoral activity: an orgy. Instead of sex, the orgy that Black Friday has become focuses on greed, pride, complete self absorption, and abandonment of the most basic self discipline. Almost equally sinful, this is not an activity that good Christians should be taking part in. Any Christian willing to take part in such an activity, even only once a year, is a hypocrite the rest of the year. Just like The Purge, people's true colors come out during Black Friday. Don't kid yourself: The person you are on Black Friday is the person you are the entire rest of the year as well. Maybe you hide it really well the rest of the year, but during Black Friday, the truth is revealed.
28 November 2014
27 November 2014
Pulling Your Own Weight
The idea of pulling your own weight is based on the idea that each person incurs costs for upkeep, including food, water, clothing, and shelter. In the U.S., we might add things like internet and electricity to this, but really it comes down to the fact that every person has an upkeep cost, and someone has to pay it. The idea of pulling your own weight is a very old idea, but also a conditional one. Each person in a society that is capable of doing so is expected to pull their own weight. Of course, there have been some deviations from this, but it is largely the most common way of running an economy.
There are some occasional historical exceptions to this, but there are also some chronic exceptions. Historical exceptions almost always involve slavery. Greek philosophy and math were built by people who did not pull their own weight. In fact, if they had not had slaves to pull their weight for them, we would probably not have modern technology and science as we know them. Slavery has been common off and on throughout history. In the U.S. and most of Western civilization, slavery (overt slavery, anyhow) has been abandoned and replaced with an economic philosophy very common to cultures that reject slavery. This philosophy is the idea that every person must pull their own weight. Chronic exceptions to this are very common and will never go away. Babies, young children, elderly people, and disabled people are not expected to pull their own weight, because they cannot. Stay-at-home mothers are treated as not pulling their own weight in many parts of modern society, however this is a filthy lie. They may not be producing goods, but stay-at-home mothers are doing work that is far more important than most of the work done outside the home. Now, the slavery exception is becoming an unusual one that is likely to overturn how we view economy, probably within the next half century.
In older economies, the pull-your-own-weight ideology was a fairly sound one. While it is possible for a small number of people to provide for a large number, the work involved has been excessive. One slave working 16 hours a day might be able to provide the needs of ten or twenty other people, but that slave cannot have any freedom because there is just no time for it. Modern technology has changed this though. Besides finding more efficient ways of producing, it has also provided ways of replacing human labor with mechanical slaves. Mechanical slavery is completely ethical. The machines can work 24 hours a day, and they never need time off or personal time. The only down time is time spent on repairs and maybe upgrades. Experts estimate that this ethical form of slavery will replace about 50% of the human workforce by 2050. This presents a very serious ideological problem.
Here is the problem: The U.S. economy is based on this pull-your-own-weight ideology. We are in the process of rapidly replacing human workers with mechanical slaves. These two things are completely incompatible. If we replace half of the human labor force with slaves and then still expect the humans to pull their own weight, we are expecting the impossible. Actually, we are perhaps doing something worse. We are missing something important. What is the actual weight of a human?
The "weight" of a human is the amount of labor required to meet that human's needs. Slavery with human slaves does not change the weight of a human; it just displaces the labor. Some human still has to pull the weight. Slavery with machines slaves, however, does change the weight of humans. Replacing human labor with machine labor directly reduces the human labor required to meet the needs of humans. This is what we are missing: As we automate more processes, we are reducing the weight of humans. The problem is that we are not accounting for this. We have high unemployment largely because we have reduced the weight of humans, and those humans that are still doing the same amount of work are now pulling more than their own weight. The result is that there is not enough work left for everyone else, because their weight is already being pulled. Unfortunately, because we have not noticed this problem, we are not distributing the results of the work appropriately. The consequence is that some people are pulling more than their own weight, and they are getting the proceeds of that. The people that are not able to pull their own weight are stuck without enough to survive, because their portion is being given to the people that are pulling their weight for them.
This is complicated, and it is not obvious that this is what is happening. Further, there is a very important reason that this is happening: We have reached a point where it is actually substantially less efficient for each person to pull their own weight. When each person's weight costs 2 to 4 hours of work per day (and, when that burden is centralized to one or two people per family), it is fairly efficient for businesses. Each employee spends enough time working to easily keep up with overhead. Now, however, each person's weight comes out to around 1 or 2 hour per day, or even less. When centralized, this comes out between 10 to 20 hours a week. Having every employee work half time doubles the overhead, because the number of employees are doubled (reducing hours does not reduce overhead). In addition to that, higher end jobs often have warm up and cool down time that results in unproductive hours on each end of a shift. This means, in an 8 hour shift, if an hour at each end is unproductive, 75% of the work time is productive. In 4 hour shifts, productivity is reduced to only 50%. In lower end jobs this effect is dramatically lower, but in high end jobs (especially in problem solving work like engineering and science), this is a major obstacle to reducing hours (note that in these jobs, longer time between shifts tends to increase the unproductive warm up time, so 8 hours three days a week is not an efficient solution either). This is an efficiency problem that is never going to go away. It is just not efficient at current human "weight" for each person to pull his or her own weight.
Is there a solution to this? Yes, but it is not a very popular one. It is incredibly unpopular among conservatives, and it is at least mildly unpopular among liberals. The solution is abandoning the pull-your-own-weight ideology. We are quickly becoming a slave state, just like Greece was, except that we are doing it ethically. If we do not abandon this pull-your-own-weight ideology, we are going to either let the majority of Americans starve as their jobs are replaced by machines, or we are going to have millions of Americans working workweeks so short that they are costing more overhead than the value they are generating. Neither of these is a good long term economic plan. One short term solution might be long vacation time, where each employee works "normal" hours, but only for 1/4 of the year, and the rest of the year is vacation time, however, that only partially mitigates overhead costs. The most efficient solution is for some people to work 20 to 40 hour weeks at least 50% to 75% of the year, while everyone else lives off of the proceeds of that work. Some kind of motivation would be necessary for those who work, and this would probably be complicated and difficult to do without resulting in an overprivileged working class and an underprivileged non-working class (ironic, given that historically the opposite happens). Ultimately though, it is going to eventually become necessary, or we are going to have an epic economic crash when so many consumers starve to death that consumption drops below an economically sustainable level.
Things are changing rapidly. Technology continues to advance faster than we can keep up with. In the past, the impact of this has been primarily limited to the tech industry itself. In the near future, however, this is going to have a massive economic impact. If we are not prepared, we are going to suffer. In some degree, the consequences are not predictable, but there is one thing that is predictable: If a large portion of human labor is replaced with machine labor, we cannot have a sustainable economy that is based in the pull-your-own-weight ideology.
There are some occasional historical exceptions to this, but there are also some chronic exceptions. Historical exceptions almost always involve slavery. Greek philosophy and math were built by people who did not pull their own weight. In fact, if they had not had slaves to pull their weight for them, we would probably not have modern technology and science as we know them. Slavery has been common off and on throughout history. In the U.S. and most of Western civilization, slavery (overt slavery, anyhow) has been abandoned and replaced with an economic philosophy very common to cultures that reject slavery. This philosophy is the idea that every person must pull their own weight. Chronic exceptions to this are very common and will never go away. Babies, young children, elderly people, and disabled people are not expected to pull their own weight, because they cannot. Stay-at-home mothers are treated as not pulling their own weight in many parts of modern society, however this is a filthy lie. They may not be producing goods, but stay-at-home mothers are doing work that is far more important than most of the work done outside the home. Now, the slavery exception is becoming an unusual one that is likely to overturn how we view economy, probably within the next half century.
In older economies, the pull-your-own-weight ideology was a fairly sound one. While it is possible for a small number of people to provide for a large number, the work involved has been excessive. One slave working 16 hours a day might be able to provide the needs of ten or twenty other people, but that slave cannot have any freedom because there is just no time for it. Modern technology has changed this though. Besides finding more efficient ways of producing, it has also provided ways of replacing human labor with mechanical slaves. Mechanical slavery is completely ethical. The machines can work 24 hours a day, and they never need time off or personal time. The only down time is time spent on repairs and maybe upgrades. Experts estimate that this ethical form of slavery will replace about 50% of the human workforce by 2050. This presents a very serious ideological problem.
Here is the problem: The U.S. economy is based on this pull-your-own-weight ideology. We are in the process of rapidly replacing human workers with mechanical slaves. These two things are completely incompatible. If we replace half of the human labor force with slaves and then still expect the humans to pull their own weight, we are expecting the impossible. Actually, we are perhaps doing something worse. We are missing something important. What is the actual weight of a human?
The "weight" of a human is the amount of labor required to meet that human's needs. Slavery with human slaves does not change the weight of a human; it just displaces the labor. Some human still has to pull the weight. Slavery with machines slaves, however, does change the weight of humans. Replacing human labor with machine labor directly reduces the human labor required to meet the needs of humans. This is what we are missing: As we automate more processes, we are reducing the weight of humans. The problem is that we are not accounting for this. We have high unemployment largely because we have reduced the weight of humans, and those humans that are still doing the same amount of work are now pulling more than their own weight. The result is that there is not enough work left for everyone else, because their weight is already being pulled. Unfortunately, because we have not noticed this problem, we are not distributing the results of the work appropriately. The consequence is that some people are pulling more than their own weight, and they are getting the proceeds of that. The people that are not able to pull their own weight are stuck without enough to survive, because their portion is being given to the people that are pulling their weight for them.
This is complicated, and it is not obvious that this is what is happening. Further, there is a very important reason that this is happening: We have reached a point where it is actually substantially less efficient for each person to pull their own weight. When each person's weight costs 2 to 4 hours of work per day (and, when that burden is centralized to one or two people per family), it is fairly efficient for businesses. Each employee spends enough time working to easily keep up with overhead. Now, however, each person's weight comes out to around 1 or 2 hour per day, or even less. When centralized, this comes out between 10 to 20 hours a week. Having every employee work half time doubles the overhead, because the number of employees are doubled (reducing hours does not reduce overhead). In addition to that, higher end jobs often have warm up and cool down time that results in unproductive hours on each end of a shift. This means, in an 8 hour shift, if an hour at each end is unproductive, 75% of the work time is productive. In 4 hour shifts, productivity is reduced to only 50%. In lower end jobs this effect is dramatically lower, but in high end jobs (especially in problem solving work like engineering and science), this is a major obstacle to reducing hours (note that in these jobs, longer time between shifts tends to increase the unproductive warm up time, so 8 hours three days a week is not an efficient solution either). This is an efficiency problem that is never going to go away. It is just not efficient at current human "weight" for each person to pull his or her own weight.
Is there a solution to this? Yes, but it is not a very popular one. It is incredibly unpopular among conservatives, and it is at least mildly unpopular among liberals. The solution is abandoning the pull-your-own-weight ideology. We are quickly becoming a slave state, just like Greece was, except that we are doing it ethically. If we do not abandon this pull-your-own-weight ideology, we are going to either let the majority of Americans starve as their jobs are replaced by machines, or we are going to have millions of Americans working workweeks so short that they are costing more overhead than the value they are generating. Neither of these is a good long term economic plan. One short term solution might be long vacation time, where each employee works "normal" hours, but only for 1/4 of the year, and the rest of the year is vacation time, however, that only partially mitigates overhead costs. The most efficient solution is for some people to work 20 to 40 hour weeks at least 50% to 75% of the year, while everyone else lives off of the proceeds of that work. Some kind of motivation would be necessary for those who work, and this would probably be complicated and difficult to do without resulting in an overprivileged working class and an underprivileged non-working class (ironic, given that historically the opposite happens). Ultimately though, it is going to eventually become necessary, or we are going to have an epic economic crash when so many consumers starve to death that consumption drops below an economically sustainable level.
Things are changing rapidly. Technology continues to advance faster than we can keep up with. In the past, the impact of this has been primarily limited to the tech industry itself. In the near future, however, this is going to have a massive economic impact. If we are not prepared, we are going to suffer. In some degree, the consequences are not predictable, but there is one thing that is predictable: If a large portion of human labor is replaced with machine labor, we cannot have a sustainable economy that is based in the pull-your-own-weight ideology.
26 November 2014
Overtime
It turns out that the average working American is working around 50 hours a week. Almost 12 percent of Americans work more than 60 hours a week. This is a problem, for several reasons. First, we still have a high rate of unemployment, and I have said before that people working more than 40 hours a week are effectively stealing work from those working less than that (who want to work 40 hours a week). Second, many of these workers are salaried, which means that no one is getting paid for this extra work. In these cases, the extra hours are being stolen, without any benefit to the thief. Some workplaces even mandate that salaried employees work more than 40 hours a week. Hourly employees are legally entitled to extra pay for overtime hours, but this does not justify stealing work that is needed by others. Ironically, hourly overtime costs the employer more, in addition to increasing unemployment. This free labor and poorly distributed work is a big problem, even though it may not be obvious. Given current unemployment as well as the 50 hour a week average of most U.S. workers, a redistribution of labor could easily solve unemployment entirely.
The first thing that needs to be done is the elimination of any unpaid labor (within an employer/employee relationship). Salaries should only apply for the first 40 hours a week of work. Even salaried workers should be entitled to overtime pay for any hours beyond 40 in a week. This by itself would push businesses to hire more employees, instead of expecting free labor from salaried employees.
The second thing that needs to be done is fines for overtime. Many states' labor laws technically forbid overtime, but they include clauses stating that overtime must paid at a higher rate when it does occur. Federal labor law does not forbid overtime, but it also requires a higher pay rate for overtime. In all cases, however, salaried employees are exempt. Federal labor law needs to remove the salaried employee exemption, and it needs to turn the 40 hour a week limit into a hard limit. No states with a hard limit actually enforce it, and there is no set penalty for violation of the limit (though, the limit does entitle an hourly employee to refuse to work overtime without threat of retribution). In addition to a Federal hard limit, penalties need to be set and enforced for violation of that limit. Fines for overtime would accomplish two useful things. First, it would encourage employers to hire more employees instead of facilitating the theft of work. Second, it would provide a source of funding for welfare to support those who are not able to find work because that work is being stolen by other people working overtime.
A more extreme third thing that could be done is fines for employees working more than 40 hours a week. The point of this is to combat the likely response of getting a second job for people who loose overtime hours due to the first two things. Again, this would both discourage working more than 40 hours a week, and it would provide a source of funding for welfare when people choose to work more hours anyway.
There is a fourth thing that needs to be done, and perhaps it should have been the first. Overtime labor laws need to be strictly enforced. Wage theft is becoming a major problem in the U.S., and a majority of it comes from unpaid work and overtime paid at a non-overtime rate. There is a local business where I live that has a strategy for avoiding overtime pay that happens to be highly illegal. This business logs hours based on client projects. Employees are forbidden from working more than 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week on any one project. The business owners seem to think that overtime pay is only necessary if overtime is worked all on one project. This business has employees (as well as ex-employees) who are owed thousands or tens of thousands of dollar in unpaid overtime. At least one has tried to report the situation to the state labor board but was told that they are too far behind to do anything about it. Evidently this situation is common across the U.S. In many cases, employees do not know their right, but in other cases, they fear retribution (also illegal) or state labor boards are understaffed (or, possibly, just lazy).
It is absurd that our country has set a 40 hour work week, but we have a high rate of unemployment largely because the average work week is actually 50 hours. Enacting and enforcing laws that push this back down to 40 hours could increase the amount of available work by up to 20%, which would completely cover our unemployment with some to spare. This would tip the economy to favor employees over employers, which would go a long way in increasing wages and reducing poverty. Our economy needs us to eliminate unpaid overtime and dramatically reduce overtime overall.
The first thing that needs to be done is the elimination of any unpaid labor (within an employer/employee relationship). Salaries should only apply for the first 40 hours a week of work. Even salaried workers should be entitled to overtime pay for any hours beyond 40 in a week. This by itself would push businesses to hire more employees, instead of expecting free labor from salaried employees.
The second thing that needs to be done is fines for overtime. Many states' labor laws technically forbid overtime, but they include clauses stating that overtime must paid at a higher rate when it does occur. Federal labor law does not forbid overtime, but it also requires a higher pay rate for overtime. In all cases, however, salaried employees are exempt. Federal labor law needs to remove the salaried employee exemption, and it needs to turn the 40 hour a week limit into a hard limit. No states with a hard limit actually enforce it, and there is no set penalty for violation of the limit (though, the limit does entitle an hourly employee to refuse to work overtime without threat of retribution). In addition to a Federal hard limit, penalties need to be set and enforced for violation of that limit. Fines for overtime would accomplish two useful things. First, it would encourage employers to hire more employees instead of facilitating the theft of work. Second, it would provide a source of funding for welfare to support those who are not able to find work because that work is being stolen by other people working overtime.
A more extreme third thing that could be done is fines for employees working more than 40 hours a week. The point of this is to combat the likely response of getting a second job for people who loose overtime hours due to the first two things. Again, this would both discourage working more than 40 hours a week, and it would provide a source of funding for welfare when people choose to work more hours anyway.
There is a fourth thing that needs to be done, and perhaps it should have been the first. Overtime labor laws need to be strictly enforced. Wage theft is becoming a major problem in the U.S., and a majority of it comes from unpaid work and overtime paid at a non-overtime rate. There is a local business where I live that has a strategy for avoiding overtime pay that happens to be highly illegal. This business logs hours based on client projects. Employees are forbidden from working more than 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week on any one project. The business owners seem to think that overtime pay is only necessary if overtime is worked all on one project. This business has employees (as well as ex-employees) who are owed thousands or tens of thousands of dollar in unpaid overtime. At least one has tried to report the situation to the state labor board but was told that they are too far behind to do anything about it. Evidently this situation is common across the U.S. In many cases, employees do not know their right, but in other cases, they fear retribution (also illegal) or state labor boards are understaffed (or, possibly, just lazy).
It is absurd that our country has set a 40 hour work week, but we have a high rate of unemployment largely because the average work week is actually 50 hours. Enacting and enforcing laws that push this back down to 40 hours could increase the amount of available work by up to 20%, which would completely cover our unemployment with some to spare. This would tip the economy to favor employees over employers, which would go a long way in increasing wages and reducing poverty. Our economy needs us to eliminate unpaid overtime and dramatically reduce overtime overall.
Upper Class Blindness
In America, we do not like to see poor people. We do not want to see homeless people. We do not want to see people living in poorly maintained low income housing. We would prefer not to see the hungry. So, what do we do about it? Evidently, we try to hide it. Within the last year, at least 21 U.S. cities have passed laws forbidding the feeding of homeless people in public. Some cities have replaced park benches with new models that include separators designed to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them. Businesses have placed obstacles on sidewalks to make sitting on them painful, to deter the homeless from loitering near their stores. In many cities, construction projects have been approved that destroy or renovate low income apartments to become classy higher income housing. In some cases, low income housing has been replaced in response to higher income residents that live nearby, who feel that the nearby low income housing damages their property values and forces them to see things they would rather not. In the U.S., our solution to our discomfort at seeing poor people is to create laws to drive them away.
This is a major ethical problem. We have plenty of poor in the U.S., and the number is only increasing. Hiding the problem is not fixing it. All of these laws and other solutions are actually making the problem worse. Now, hungry homeless people are being forced to starve, because they cannot be fed where they are, and they have nowhere else to go. Tearing down low income housing is putting more people on the streets. Perhaps the worst part, though, is that all of these efforts to hide the problem are making it less obvious, which makes it easier to ignore the suffering.
There is a solution. It is a painful one, and the upper class will certainly be opposed to it. It needs to be done though. The problem has been ignored for so long that there seems to be no other reasonable way. First, I think we need an amendment to the Constitution offering Federal protection for the poor. No law should be allowed to persist which is designed specifically to discriminate against the poor. When a city tries to enact a law designed to hide the fact that the city is tolerating the pain and suffering of its poor, Federal courts should have the legal backing to come down hard on that city. Building projects designed specifically to relieve the rich from the burden of seeing the suffering of the poor should also be shut down. In fact, the truly ethical city would deliberately zone such that every large, expensive house looked out at cheap low income housing. The homeless shelter should be right next to the highest income mansion. The soup kitchens should be right across from the country clubs. Not only should it be legal to feed the homeless right out on the streets where they live, it should be encouraged to feed them in prominent locations where the rich can observe, and the right to feed them in those places should be legally protected. The point of all of this is that the people with the greatest capacity to improve the situation should be the people who have the greatest exposure to the problem. Yes, this will be very emotionally painful. It should be. Imagine the pain and suffering of those poor people. If we think we cannot bear to feel at least a part of their suffering, we deserve to feel the full impact of their fate for ourselves.
Upper class blindness needs to be cured. If this requires the poor to be shoved in the faces of the rich, then this is what needs to be done. Perhaps if the rich were forced to realize what their money games are doing to our nation's poor, they would think twice about how their business deals and profit strategies might be causing harm to others.
This is a major ethical problem. We have plenty of poor in the U.S., and the number is only increasing. Hiding the problem is not fixing it. All of these laws and other solutions are actually making the problem worse. Now, hungry homeless people are being forced to starve, because they cannot be fed where they are, and they have nowhere else to go. Tearing down low income housing is putting more people on the streets. Perhaps the worst part, though, is that all of these efforts to hide the problem are making it less obvious, which makes it easier to ignore the suffering.
There is a solution. It is a painful one, and the upper class will certainly be opposed to it. It needs to be done though. The problem has been ignored for so long that there seems to be no other reasonable way. First, I think we need an amendment to the Constitution offering Federal protection for the poor. No law should be allowed to persist which is designed specifically to discriminate against the poor. When a city tries to enact a law designed to hide the fact that the city is tolerating the pain and suffering of its poor, Federal courts should have the legal backing to come down hard on that city. Building projects designed specifically to relieve the rich from the burden of seeing the suffering of the poor should also be shut down. In fact, the truly ethical city would deliberately zone such that every large, expensive house looked out at cheap low income housing. The homeless shelter should be right next to the highest income mansion. The soup kitchens should be right across from the country clubs. Not only should it be legal to feed the homeless right out on the streets where they live, it should be encouraged to feed them in prominent locations where the rich can observe, and the right to feed them in those places should be legally protected. The point of all of this is that the people with the greatest capacity to improve the situation should be the people who have the greatest exposure to the problem. Yes, this will be very emotionally painful. It should be. Imagine the pain and suffering of those poor people. If we think we cannot bear to feel at least a part of their suffering, we deserve to feel the full impact of their fate for ourselves.
Upper class blindness needs to be cured. If this requires the poor to be shoved in the faces of the rich, then this is what needs to be done. Perhaps if the rich were forced to realize what their money games are doing to our nation's poor, they would think twice about how their business deals and profit strategies might be causing harm to others.
17 November 2014
The Little Red Hen
There was once a little red hen. She owned a wheat field. When duck came asking for a job working on the farm, the little red hen told him that she did not need any help, because she had an automatic system for planting, watering, harvesting, and separating the wheat. The little red hen also owned a flour mill, but when pig asked if there was anything he could do to help, the little red hen told him that she had an automatic delivery system from the farm to the mill, and the processes for milling the wheat and bagging the flour were automated as well. The little red hen had a bread factory, but when cow asked if there was something she could do to help, the little red hen told cow that the factory was so well automated that she did not even need someone for quality control. The little red hen had a bakery as well. When horse asked if he could help sell the bread, the little red hen showed him rows of completely automated bread vending machines, and she told him she already had it covered.
When it came time to harvest the wheat, the automatic harvester harvested all the wheat, it dumped it into a thresher, which separated the grain from the chaff. The wheat was then pour into buckets on a conveyor belt, which carried the wheat to the mill next door. Machines at the mill dumped the buckets into the milling machine, and the flour cascaded down a funnel into bags. Another conveyor carried the flour next door to the bread factory, where they were dumped into huge mixers along with water and other ingredients, then divided into loaves, cooked, bagged, and sent to the bakery on yet another conveyor. A complex mechanical system hidden behind the vending machines filled each one with bagged loaves of bread. The little red hen then waited for customers to buy her bread.
After a few hours with no business, the little red hen looked out the front window. Standing outside, across the street, stood duck, pig, cow, and horse, looking longingly at the bakery. The little red hen walked outside and called across the street, asking why they were looking but not buying any bread. One by one, each of them explained that they had been unable to find any jobs, so they had no money. They just could not afford the bread. The little red hen stuck up her beak and went back inside. She did not need friends who were poor, when she had so much. If they did not have any money, then they would not have any bread.
Duck, pig, cow, and horse lived on the streets until they starved to death. Only the little red hen was left in the town, but she was content. She had plenty of bread. Her lack of friends did not bother her. She was rich, so she did not need any friends. Her money and her property could be her friends. At least, this is what she told herself when she started feeling lonely.
(In case someone thinks that this story is about the evils of automation, read my opinion on that subject: Dehumanizing. Automation is not evil. People who succumb to greed are what is evil.)
When it came time to harvest the wheat, the automatic harvester harvested all the wheat, it dumped it into a thresher, which separated the grain from the chaff. The wheat was then pour into buckets on a conveyor belt, which carried the wheat to the mill next door. Machines at the mill dumped the buckets into the milling machine, and the flour cascaded down a funnel into bags. Another conveyor carried the flour next door to the bread factory, where they were dumped into huge mixers along with water and other ingredients, then divided into loaves, cooked, bagged, and sent to the bakery on yet another conveyor. A complex mechanical system hidden behind the vending machines filled each one with bagged loaves of bread. The little red hen then waited for customers to buy her bread.
After a few hours with no business, the little red hen looked out the front window. Standing outside, across the street, stood duck, pig, cow, and horse, looking longingly at the bakery. The little red hen walked outside and called across the street, asking why they were looking but not buying any bread. One by one, each of them explained that they had been unable to find any jobs, so they had no money. They just could not afford the bread. The little red hen stuck up her beak and went back inside. She did not need friends who were poor, when she had so much. If they did not have any money, then they would not have any bread.
Duck, pig, cow, and horse lived on the streets until they starved to death. Only the little red hen was left in the town, but she was content. She had plenty of bread. Her lack of friends did not bother her. She was rich, so she did not need any friends. Her money and her property could be her friends. At least, this is what she told herself when she started feeling lonely.
(In case someone thinks that this story is about the evils of automation, read my opinion on that subject: Dehumanizing. Automation is not evil. People who succumb to greed are what is evil.)
Universal Pre-K
http://national.deseretnews.com/article/2750/navigating-the-research-on-universal-pre-k-overhyped-or-silver-bullet.html
I just read this, and I see so many flaws in the various arguments that I cannot resist writing about it.
First, the argument is about whether the Federal government should devote several billions of dollars to make preschool part of the education system. There is some evidence that poor children are likely to make more money and are less likely to get involved in crime when they grow up, if they attended a preschool. There is also, however, significant evidence that the cognitive benefits of preschool disappear within 2 years of starting elementary school. The cost to the country of doing this is around $15 billion. One side of the argument claims that universal pre-K is the best way to improve education and situation of the poor. The other side argues that the benefits are primarily temporary, and the cost will be more than the return. At this point, I don't actually care who is right. Perhaps we need more research, preferably done by people with mixed opinions, to avoid confirmation bias.
The first problem with universal pre-K is the cost. Our nation is already heavily in debt, and if we cannot prove that the investment will pay off, perhaps we should not do it. The second is reach. While the evidence shows that poor children can gain substantial long term benefits from pre-K, there is no conclusive evidence that middle and upper class children benefit at all. Those supporting universal pre-K say that it will not be taken seriously if it only targets poor people, and they cite Head Start as an example of this. While this is probably true, it is not, perhaps a valid excuse for spending many times what is necessary. What I hear them saying is, "We need to spend $15 billion to get people to take this seriously." That money would probably be more effective spent as a bribe to get the people to pretend to take it seriously than it would to use it to offer preschool to those whom it is unlikely to benefit.
There is also a lot of mud slinging going on in this debate, which makes it very difficult to determine what is fact and what is opinion. There is one study that "was likely underfunded" (yeah, I don't know what that is supposed to mean either) that showed kids who attended pre-K actually did worse in math and language than kids who did not. The "fact" that it might have been underfunded is used to discredit it. Likewise, another study showed impressive long term benefits from pre-K, at a price of $90,000 per child. While this study may have been valid, the price tag for those results is just not an option.
One theory as to why benefits are observed is that preschool provides more social interaction than the home, improving the social skills of the children at an age where it makes a bigger difference. Perhaps (though it is not stated), middle and upper class children have more opportunities to gain social skills at 4 years old than lower class children? If this is not true, then this theory does not account for the discrepancy between lower class children and middle/upper class children. (Supposedly, poor families are actually having fewer children than middle and upper class families now, so maybe social interaction at home can have the same benefits, so long as there are several children.) Regardless, if this is true, we don't need to bother spending $15 billion extra on this. It is already proven that the benefits of the learning go away fairly quickly. If the social interaction is the key, then we could eliminate low income pre-K programs like Head Start and instead provide government funded day care, and it would be far cheaper. Day care provides a very similar social setting, and day care workers don't cost as much as trained educators. In fact, without the learning part attached, and presented as an aid to poor families where both parents work, it would be taken far more seriously than a preschool program justified primarily by limited and unreliable data.
One proponent of universal pre-K asks a question that is stupidly obvious. Discussing some of the problems with programs specifically targeting poor people, Steven Barnett asks, "Why would we do that? Why not just make it open to everyone?" The painfully obvious answer is $15 billion. I guess he just didn't think of that one. In addition to this, there are multiple claims that the $15 billion to $20 billion already being spent on low income preschool programs is being spent poorly. Not everyone agrees with this, but given the state of the rest of our education system, it is hard to believe that significant improvements are not possible.
Ultimately, the situation is complicated. Obama and other proponents of the idea seem to be prepared to throw huge amounts of money at in, just in case it works. There is evidence that it could be beneficial, but there is no evidence that it will be. None of the most influential studies mirrored the reality of the situation well enough to actually trust. The less influential studies all seem to be affected by many uncontrolled factors, as there is really no consensus between them. Studies targeting the middle and upper classes are unlikely to ever be conducted, because no one seems to care. What I see this as is a giant $15 billion experiment that will affect children all around the U.S., to see whether universal pre-K will help them or harm them. Maybe the potential for harm is not that high, but the price tag certainly is. $15 billion is enough money to pull over 1 million Americans out of poverty entirely. This would dramatically reduce the need for a preschool system designed to help poor children, and it would likely do far more for them than preschool ever could.
I don't care who is right in the debate over benefits, but I am opposed to spending huge amounts of money on things that have such a high risk of failure. Instead of arguing over what the data means, maybe we need to spend a fraction of that money doing more research, where the situations are closer to what they would be if universal pre-K was made available on the proposed budget. I might not care about who is right, but I certainly do not want our government to gamble even more money on huge social experiments that have a limited probability of paying off.
I just read this, and I see so many flaws in the various arguments that I cannot resist writing about it.
First, the argument is about whether the Federal government should devote several billions of dollars to make preschool part of the education system. There is some evidence that poor children are likely to make more money and are less likely to get involved in crime when they grow up, if they attended a preschool. There is also, however, significant evidence that the cognitive benefits of preschool disappear within 2 years of starting elementary school. The cost to the country of doing this is around $15 billion. One side of the argument claims that universal pre-K is the best way to improve education and situation of the poor. The other side argues that the benefits are primarily temporary, and the cost will be more than the return. At this point, I don't actually care who is right. Perhaps we need more research, preferably done by people with mixed opinions, to avoid confirmation bias.
The first problem with universal pre-K is the cost. Our nation is already heavily in debt, and if we cannot prove that the investment will pay off, perhaps we should not do it. The second is reach. While the evidence shows that poor children can gain substantial long term benefits from pre-K, there is no conclusive evidence that middle and upper class children benefit at all. Those supporting universal pre-K say that it will not be taken seriously if it only targets poor people, and they cite Head Start as an example of this. While this is probably true, it is not, perhaps a valid excuse for spending many times what is necessary. What I hear them saying is, "We need to spend $15 billion to get people to take this seriously." That money would probably be more effective spent as a bribe to get the people to pretend to take it seriously than it would to use it to offer preschool to those whom it is unlikely to benefit.
There is also a lot of mud slinging going on in this debate, which makes it very difficult to determine what is fact and what is opinion. There is one study that "was likely underfunded" (yeah, I don't know what that is supposed to mean either) that showed kids who attended pre-K actually did worse in math and language than kids who did not. The "fact" that it might have been underfunded is used to discredit it. Likewise, another study showed impressive long term benefits from pre-K, at a price of $90,000 per child. While this study may have been valid, the price tag for those results is just not an option.
One theory as to why benefits are observed is that preschool provides more social interaction than the home, improving the social skills of the children at an age where it makes a bigger difference. Perhaps (though it is not stated), middle and upper class children have more opportunities to gain social skills at 4 years old than lower class children? If this is not true, then this theory does not account for the discrepancy between lower class children and middle/upper class children. (Supposedly, poor families are actually having fewer children than middle and upper class families now, so maybe social interaction at home can have the same benefits, so long as there are several children.) Regardless, if this is true, we don't need to bother spending $15 billion extra on this. It is already proven that the benefits of the learning go away fairly quickly. If the social interaction is the key, then we could eliminate low income pre-K programs like Head Start and instead provide government funded day care, and it would be far cheaper. Day care provides a very similar social setting, and day care workers don't cost as much as trained educators. In fact, without the learning part attached, and presented as an aid to poor families where both parents work, it would be taken far more seriously than a preschool program justified primarily by limited and unreliable data.
One proponent of universal pre-K asks a question that is stupidly obvious. Discussing some of the problems with programs specifically targeting poor people, Steven Barnett asks, "Why would we do that? Why not just make it open to everyone?" The painfully obvious answer is $15 billion. I guess he just didn't think of that one. In addition to this, there are multiple claims that the $15 billion to $20 billion already being spent on low income preschool programs is being spent poorly. Not everyone agrees with this, but given the state of the rest of our education system, it is hard to believe that significant improvements are not possible.
Ultimately, the situation is complicated. Obama and other proponents of the idea seem to be prepared to throw huge amounts of money at in, just in case it works. There is evidence that it could be beneficial, but there is no evidence that it will be. None of the most influential studies mirrored the reality of the situation well enough to actually trust. The less influential studies all seem to be affected by many uncontrolled factors, as there is really no consensus between them. Studies targeting the middle and upper classes are unlikely to ever be conducted, because no one seems to care. What I see this as is a giant $15 billion experiment that will affect children all around the U.S., to see whether universal pre-K will help them or harm them. Maybe the potential for harm is not that high, but the price tag certainly is. $15 billion is enough money to pull over 1 million Americans out of poverty entirely. This would dramatically reduce the need for a preschool system designed to help poor children, and it would likely do far more for them than preschool ever could.
I don't care who is right in the debate over benefits, but I am opposed to spending huge amounts of money on things that have such a high risk of failure. Instead of arguing over what the data means, maybe we need to spend a fraction of that money doing more research, where the situations are closer to what they would be if universal pre-K was made available on the proposed budget. I might not care about who is right, but I certainly do not want our government to gamble even more money on huge social experiments that have a limited probability of paying off.
10 November 2014
Taco Bell App
Taco Bell has come out with an ordering app that allows customers to use their smart phones to put in an order and pay for it. As the customer approaches a Taco Bell location, the app asks if they want the restaurant to start preparing their food. This process can involve almost no human contact (I suppose someone has to pass the food out the window, but ordering and paying is entirely electronic).
As this becomes more popular (Taco Bell is not the first to try this, and it most certainly will not be the last), a lot of jobs are going to be lost. Eventually, most drive through orders will not require a cashier, because most of them will already be ordered and paid for before the customer even enters the drive through. This will allow the drive through cashier position to be combined with another position. It is also likely that the added convenience will reduce the need for inside cashiers. Eventually this is going to spread to all fast food restaurants, because otherwise, they will not be able to compete. This is going to add up to a lot of jobs that are lost.
It is about time! Fast food restaurants severely underpay their employees. They claim that they cannot afford to pay more. I have argued this before, and I will repeat it again: A business that cannot pay employees enough to survive on is not worth existing. Work that is not worth a living wage is not worth doing at all. Pay that is below a living wage is just plain not sustainable. A business that cannot pay a living wage is not profitable enough or valuable enough to justify its own existence. Fast food is practically the bottom of the barrel (ok, agriculture is far worse, but also far less prominent). Current Federal minimum wage, which most fast food places start at, generates well under the poverty level in income, even full time. One of the most effective ways of reducing costs (so that employees can be paid fair wages) is automating processes and eliminating unnecessary employees. Food assembly is hard to automate (though, certainly possible). Automated order taking is now very easy to automate. It is the low hanging fruit. It is nice to see that fast food is finally figuring this out.
There is a catch. The most common response to increased profits through automation is faster expansion and better shareholder payouts (or, even worse, increased CEO salary). If Taco Bell choses to take this route, then not only is it not worth existing, it is actively worth destroying. Why? It is already vastly underpaying its employees. It should take this opportunity to make its employment system more sustainable by raising wages. Admittedly, eliminating maybe two or three employees will not save enough to pay all of the rest a living wage. An effort, however, would be nice. It would show that they care about paying their employees fairly. If, instead, they spend the profits on something else, then they are showing that they could care less about their employees. If this is the case, then the business does not deserve to exist, and additionally, it deserves to die so society no longer has to pay the costs of its freeloading on our unpaid labor (if it pays less than a living wage, then it is not paying for all of the labor it is getting). I hope they do the right thing, but I am not holding my breath.
As this becomes more popular (Taco Bell is not the first to try this, and it most certainly will not be the last), a lot of jobs are going to be lost. Eventually, most drive through orders will not require a cashier, because most of them will already be ordered and paid for before the customer even enters the drive through. This will allow the drive through cashier position to be combined with another position. It is also likely that the added convenience will reduce the need for inside cashiers. Eventually this is going to spread to all fast food restaurants, because otherwise, they will not be able to compete. This is going to add up to a lot of jobs that are lost.
It is about time! Fast food restaurants severely underpay their employees. They claim that they cannot afford to pay more. I have argued this before, and I will repeat it again: A business that cannot pay employees enough to survive on is not worth existing. Work that is not worth a living wage is not worth doing at all. Pay that is below a living wage is just plain not sustainable. A business that cannot pay a living wage is not profitable enough or valuable enough to justify its own existence. Fast food is practically the bottom of the barrel (ok, agriculture is far worse, but also far less prominent). Current Federal minimum wage, which most fast food places start at, generates well under the poverty level in income, even full time. One of the most effective ways of reducing costs (so that employees can be paid fair wages) is automating processes and eliminating unnecessary employees. Food assembly is hard to automate (though, certainly possible). Automated order taking is now very easy to automate. It is the low hanging fruit. It is nice to see that fast food is finally figuring this out.
There is a catch. The most common response to increased profits through automation is faster expansion and better shareholder payouts (or, even worse, increased CEO salary). If Taco Bell choses to take this route, then not only is it not worth existing, it is actively worth destroying. Why? It is already vastly underpaying its employees. It should take this opportunity to make its employment system more sustainable by raising wages. Admittedly, eliminating maybe two or three employees will not save enough to pay all of the rest a living wage. An effort, however, would be nice. It would show that they care about paying their employees fairly. If, instead, they spend the profits on something else, then they are showing that they could care less about their employees. If this is the case, then the business does not deserve to exist, and additionally, it deserves to die so society no longer has to pay the costs of its freeloading on our unpaid labor (if it pays less than a living wage, then it is not paying for all of the labor it is getting). I hope they do the right thing, but I am not holding my breath.
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