The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

[5hout]

You mention the increase in expense of cars. But as you point out, cars today are far superior to previous eras. Justifying their cost. But that does not apply to housing.

Yes and no. All but the most shoddily built of houses today are going to cost far less to maintain, heat and cool than the average house built 50 years ago.

Of course, we responded by doubling the size of the average house so we're spending the same or more as % of our income.

Also, via minimum house size regulation and other related zoning regs we've legally prevent people from bootstrapping with small houses that they add onto overtime. Related: Here's a really cool blogpost discussing small houses that are now illegal to even come close to building.https://www.granolashotgun.com/granolas ... otgd2n1ebr See also: Cheap a-frames gtfo poors.

[hsilman]

I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.

a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)

b) Adam Smith literally wrote about this in Wealth of Nations, which I've quoted before. He recognized that wealth would constantly flow upwards and become more and more concentrated by the owners of capital, and one of the key roles of government and taxation was the redistribution of wealth.

wrt tiny houses etc, yeah totally agree. One of the reasons for moving to NC for us is we would be able to build a small home on property with minimal issues.

[SnakePlissken]

I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.

a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)

b) Adam Smith literally wrote about this in Wealth of Nations, which I've quoted before. He recognized that wealth would constantly flow upwards and become more and more concentrated by the owners of capital, and one of the key roles of government and taxation was the redistribution of wealth.

wrt tiny houses etc, yeah totally agree. One of the reasons for moving to NC for us is we would be able to build a small home on property with minimal issues.

At one of my old jobs I was friends with one of our chemical suppliers because she went to the same college I did. Got invited to their 4th of July bbq and talked to her husband for a while who was in the Air Force and trained pilots. After a while we got onto recruitment standards because I was still curious about becoming a pilot and he told me that according to the military, and on an intelligence basis alone, only about 77% of the US population is useful for any MOS. It's a pretty alarming stat.

My story with people I worked with, we had one dude that was in his late 30s, lived at his dad's house and didn't even pay rent, and routinely showed up to work on heroin (always late). He was so useless our manager would usually put him on dishes because he got in the way on the make table and then all of our dishes for the next 4 hours would be dirty still. He just put them in the dishwasher without scrapping or soaking anything (essentially a sanitizer). He was a useless person and created more work for people to do than when he wasn't there. I stand by what I said.

[5hout]

b) Adam Smith literally wrote about this in Wealth of Nations, which I've quoted before. He recognized that wealth would constantly flow upwards and become more and more concentrated by the owners of capital, and one of the key roles of government and taxation was the redistribution of wealth.

wrt tiny houses etc, yeah totally agree. One of the reasons for moving to NC for us is we would be able to build a small home on property with minimal issues.

Dead white person = doesn't count. Seriously though if a person took a few weeks and read Wealth of Nations then Theory of Games and Economic Behavior they'd be a lot less confused about the world.

I also asked the AI:

What 10 books on Economics should I read after I read The Wealth of Nations and Theory of Games and Economic Behavior?

1. "The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time" by Karl Polanyi
2. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Thomas Piketty
3. "Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I" by Karl Marx
4. "Magna Carta Libertatum (Great Charter of Liberties)"
5. "The Real World Economics Reader" edited By Yanis Varoufakis & Joseph Stiglitz
6."Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science"" by Dani Rodrik
7."On Power And Ideology : The Managment Of Social Systems ""By Alvin Toffler 8."Post-Capitalist Society"" By Peter Drucker 9."Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant: Guide to Financial Freedom ""by Robert Kiyosaki with Sharon Lechter 10."Animal Spirits How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism ""by George Akerlof & Robert Shiller

(Formatting is the AIs). I'd say the AI did good on this question.

[mikeylikey]

b) Adam Smith literally wrote about this in Wealth of Nations, which I've quoted before. He recognized that wealth would constantly flow upwards and become more and more concentrated by the owners of capital, and one of the key roles of government and taxation was the redistribution of wealth.

wrt tiny houses etc, yeah totally agree. One of the reasons for moving to NC for us is we would be able to build a small home on property with minimal issues.

Dead white person = doesn't count. Seriously though if a person took a few weeks and read Wealth of Nations then Theory of Games and Economic Behavior they'd be a lot less confused about the world.

I also asked the AI:

What 10 books on Economics should I read after I read The Wealth of Nations and Theory of Games and Economic Behavior?

1. "The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time" by Karl Polanyi
2. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Thomas Piketty
3. "Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I" by Karl Marx
4. "Magna Carta Libertatum (Great Charter of Liberties)"
5. "The Real World Economics Reader" edited By Yanis Varoufakis & Joseph Stiglitz
6."Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science"" by Dani Rodrik
7."On Power And Ideology : The Managment Of Social Systems ""By Alvin Toffler 8."Post-Capitalist Society"" By Peter Drucker 9."Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant: Guide to Financial Freedom ""by Robert Kiyosaki with Sharon Lechter 10."Animal Spirits How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism ""by George Akerlof & Robert Shiller

(Formatting is the AIs). I'd say the AI did good on this question.

Well you've got the Keynsian* shit covered.

Maybe round out the 10 with
Economics in one lesson - Henry Hazlitt
Theory of Money and Credit - Ludwig von Mises
End the Fed - Ron Paul (No really. This is as complete and in-depth a history of the financial system and monetary policy as you are going to get. Take or leave the conclusions as you will but the information is really good)


(*But really should read Keynes even though he was wrong as fuck.)

[5hout]

I also asked the AI:


3. "Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I" by Karl Marx

(Formatting is the AIs). I'd say the AI did good on this question.

End the Fed - Ron Paul (No really. This is as complete and in-depth a history of the financial system and monetary policy as you are going to get. Take or leave the conclusions as you will but the information is really good)

I think End the Fed is analogous to Das Kapital in that it's a book you should read for the identification of problems that are going to get worse, not for the solutions. I'd say see also "Georgism" as a resurgent rationalist idea. Just b/c someone is spot on with finding problems doesn't mean they have ideas on how to fix the problems.

[mikeylikey]

I think End the Fed is analogous to Das Kapital in that it's a book you should read for the identification of problems that are going to get worse, not for the solutions.

That's pretty fair.

[Philbert]

3. Some mechanism for those without two competent parents to get a higher education
Current policy has eliminated #1 and #2 in favor of #3

There is no reason for #3, at least as stated, to be incompatible with 1 and 2.

Purdue University says it costs 23k/year to attend with room and board, before financial aid. If you are poor you will get some financial aid. Work part time and there is no reason you should graduate with more than a few tens of thousands in student loan debt. Get a degree that qualifies you for a good job (isn't this the point of college?) and this is not a crisis.

Making college attainable for poor kids should never result in anyone having 150k in debt with a useless degree.

The problem is not that we decided to make higher education accessible to poor people, per se. The problem is we decided there should no no barriers whatsoever to anybody getting any degree(s) from any institution regardless of the cost. Because if being poor means you can't get a masters degree in pottery from Harvard that's just not fair.

Your are right. It's the "any person should be able to get any degree from any school" mentality that makes #1 and #2 impossible.

[Philbert]

People should be able to test out of lower level courses that can be easily tested at testing centers.

Community College as a whole should be publicly funded, little to no expense imposed on the student.
Low cost options that got you halfway through your Bachelors would be a game changer.

I did a fair amount of CLEP, probably 1.5 years worth, for a cost of about $500. I also took about a year worth of courses at Community College, at ~$100/credit hour, over the course of two years and three summers, while working. I went full time to a state school for 2 years to finish my 4 year degree. I paid for all of it with the money I made working during those 4 years, although my living expenses were exceptionally low due to living with my parents in the summers and on weekends. Organizing that required competent parents, and one of my siblings actually figured out most of the planning side of it. If I had less helpful parents or less ambitious siblings I would have been doing manual labor for the rest of my life (not that that would have been bad, sometimes I miss it). All of my higher education was heavily subsidized, except the CLEPs

[Philbert]

I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.

a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)

On the thought experiment line, an individual can subsist on less than $10 per day in a warm climate. Not a life I would choose, but I would choose it over being shot in the head. So "$22/hr or the showers" is a false dichotomy.

[Allentown]

I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.

a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)

On the thought experiment line, an individual can subsist on less than $10 per day in a warm climate. Not a life I would choose, but I would choose it over being shot in the head. So "$22/hr or the showers" is a false dichotomy.

This involves shitting in the woods and bathing in a lake, I assume?

[Philbert]

I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.

a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)

On the thought experiment line, an individual can subsist on less than $10 per day in a warm climate. Not a life I would choose, but I would choose it over being shot in the head. So "$22/hr or the showers" is a false dichotomy.

This involves shitting in the woods and bathing in a lake, I assume?

Pro tip: try to find a lake uphill and upwind of the woods.
Seriously though, shitting without a house is not much of a problem. Bathing is harder.

[Allentown]

I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.

a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)

On the thought experiment line, an individual can subsist on less than $10 per day in a warm climate. Not a life I would choose, but I would choose it over being shot in the head. So "$22/hr or the showers" is a false dichotomy.

This involves shitting in the woods and bathing in a lake, I assume?

Pro tip: try to find a lake uphill and upwind of the woods.
Seriously though, shitting without a house is not much of a problem. Bathing is harder.

Yes, I too have gone backpacking. Doing those things while working 30-60hr a week is a little different.

Let's make some very basic "living outside full time" costs- say, $500 for a hammock, sleeping bag, water filter, camp stove, a few other small things. $10/day for food. Probably put away some money somehow/somewhere so you can move around. Need to get somewhere where the weather is livable outside year round. Can't vote, no address. No real prospects of acquiring property, so hopefully public land is free for "habitation." Need some way to come up with that $20/day (at least for the first few months to pay for your gear to live in/with) so need to be near enough to other people.

[dw]

I was dumbstruck by hsilman's post but now I wish I had replied with the elegantly understated "that's a false dichotomy".

Whatever one thinks about the minimum wage and the distribution of wealth in the US, I encounter minimum wage workers every day, all of them apparently alive and usually seeming pretty upbeat.

And without minimizing the problem of being poor let's at least have the honesty to acknowledge that the poor are publcly subsidized in numerous ways already. Whether these subsidies are desirable or Insufficient or whatever one might think, we're not talking about a Darwinian jungle with nothing but a wage floor for relief.

[hsilman]

That's why I stated it clearly as sarcastic/not accurate and at best a "thought experiment" in a tongue in cheek way.

I'm glad to hear I can render someone speechless with a simple exaggeration with a little sarcasm. My parents would be proud, I guess.

[Culican]

Living for ~$25/day (in 2017)

[hector]

I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.

a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)

On the thought experiment line, an individual can subsist on less than $10 per day in a warm climate. Not a life I would choose, but I would choose it over being shot in the head. So "$22/hr or the showers" is a false dichotomy.

This involves shitting in the woods and bathing in a lake, I assume?

Pro tip: try to find a lake uphill and upwind of the woods.
Seriously though, shitting without a house is not much of a problem. Bathing is harder.

Yes, I too have gone backpacking. Doing those things while working 30-60hr a week is a little different.

Let's make some very basic "living outside full time" costs- say, $500 for a hammock, sleeping bag, water filter, camp stove, a few other small things. $10/day for food. Probably put away some money somehow/somewhere so you can move around. Need to get somewhere where the weather is livable outside year round. Can't vote, no address. No real prospects of acquiring property, so hopefully public land is free for "habitation." Need some way to come up with that $20/day (at least for the first few months to pay for your gear to live in/with) so need to be near enough to other people.

I've been to multiple cities recently that are heavily occupied illegally with people in tents. I'm sure many are living on less than $10 per day.
I dont think it's in their interest, or ours, for this to continue. Quality of life is lessened by these communities.
I'm not going to pretend to be smart enough to know how to fix it, but there has to be a better way.

[Culican]

Phoenix's Largest Homeless Encampment Has Sparked a Lawsuit. What Now?

[hector]

Phoenix's Largest Homeless Encampment Has Sparked a Lawsuit. What Now?

That was a good article.
If I were homeless in Phoenix I'd make it a goal to get together enough money for the 5 hour bus ride to be homeless by the beach in Southern CA instead.
Batter weather. Has to be better public benefits.

[Philbert]

[tent slum]

Phoenix's Largest Homeless Encampment Has Sparked a Lawsuit. What Now?

That was a good article.
If I were homeless in Phoenix I'd make it a goal to get together enough money for the 5 hour bus ride to be homeless by the beach in Southern CA instead.
Batter weather. Has to be better public benefits.

Yes, but, if all the homeless people you know are in Phoenix, including the neighbor who keeps an eye on your stuff when you are out doing whatever else you do, the hassle of rebuilding your social network would outweigh the benefits in the short to medium term. Not to mention, if you were homeless and had the means and overall executive function to facilitate accumulating the money for a bus ticket and planning an interstate move you might decide to un-homeless yourself instead.