oh... a government entity did that to me once

they hired me to do a bunch of work. i gave them a price. we signed on it.

halfway through it and me still waiting for my initial down payment i get a call from the guy i was working with.

they had run down the budget line for my purchase and could i do it for less.

i said okay i can work for less but i have to do a smaller package. i can’t deliver on the initial thing (the initial thing required me to hire a bunch of contractors)

he protested but i tried to explain that i would lose money

i never heard back and was left holding my dick...

this story is not about corporations though. itks about the challenges a business faces. FROM ALL SIDES.

anyway i really have to go to the bread line now and get my rations from party chairman comrade bernie

Nothing wrong with running a business, and yes it is very difficult. The fact that a man like Jeff Bezos started Amazon by selling books in his garage is commendable.

However, when you consider hoarding the nation's resources... when is enough enough? You reach a certain point as a business where certain things are possible for you which others could never dream of. How exactly is someone supposed to compete with Amazon at this point? Amazon can barely keep up with Amazon Prime without pushing their employees to the bone, and even Wal-Mart can do little more than their best to copy Amazon's every move. Then Amazon finds legal loop holes where they end up paying $0 on their income tax? It's fucked man.

Y'know, I used to identify as a Libertarian. A LaVeyan Satanist Libertarian, "survival of the fittest" blow hard. I would preach for people to innovate and find a way to survive or be left in the dust. I'm older now, and understand that life isn't simply so black, and white. I'm far softer now: there's a lot of grey out there, and I feel like people need help. It's the system itself that's fucked, we've had too much of a good thing for too long. If someone like Bernie is fighting to help the little guy, then I feel we should seize the opportunity. Most of his policies will never fly through but if he can make enough changes to help out those in need, to give students some breathing room, give everyone tax-paid health care, protect our environment: we can re-build. Everything is so tense right now. The nation can use a sense of comfort.

No, but mine was. You asked what I meant by ruthless which I assumed you meant in reference to my point about ruthless corporate practices, so I gave a real world example of one.

What about when automation takes hold? How are people going to find work then? We need to prepare for that, symbols. People are going to need a way to feed themselves, and provide comfort for their families.

I don't know if it'll ever be accepted in the US but I can see the Universal Basic Income idea becoming an inevitability in Europe before very long. Personally I think governments need to stop being squeamish about this and look to introducing some version of it at least as soon as possible.

Finland just trialled a two-year UBI scheme (only for 2000 people though) - not sure what the results of it were yet, but there's a site here for more info:
https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-inc...ment-2017-2018

that is a deadbeat customer not a “corporate practice”

deadbeat customers come in many forms, from internet pirates to people who default on their credit cards and the banks has to “settle”. the orange blob was also a consummate deadbeat. sometimes when a good honest business begins to fail they can’t meet their obligations either. shit happens to everyone.

there is a risk when you lend money to anyone. filling a purchase order is an act of lending. it takes trust. this is where credit ratings come handy—you know who is a credit risk.

a customer with good credit usually will have a running account with a business, even get discounts.

a deadbeat might be required to pay upfront in cash.

a business in the habit of stiffing their suppliers is going to run out of suppliers very fast

these things are part and parcel of doing business. this is why there is loss as well as gain. this is what the average uninformed indoctrinated does not understand—they think that “business” is all gain all the time.

the question of getting paid sooner but less, or later but in full, is the reason why lending risk needs to be factored in. sometimes everyone pays on time and you have “excess profits! shame on greed!”. and other times you’ll be robbed.

this is also why there is a trade in business notes. if you’ve ever considered a “money market” account in the bank, it comes from the trade of, among other thing, short-term business debts as financial instruments.

so... i get that your employer was stiffed by a corporate customer but that is not a feature of “corporate practices”.

Two reasons the Bookies are probably correct:

TRUMP gains with Blacks, Hispanics and Women

CANDIDATES Embrace Reparations For Slavery

here in the US we have Earned Income Credit.

when you make below a certain treshhold, you get PAID taxes instead of paying them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earn...ome_tax_credit

i think it’s a good anti-misery tool. it’s never gonna buy you all the pleasures in life but it prevents some of the worse scenarios.

the ubi idea might work. read the news the other day the finland results were that it does not encourage more work, but it’s not so bad either. would have to look into again but it remains an interesting proposition.

i’m more interested however in UNIVERSAL BASIC CAPITAL. which rather than pay an income would give everybody a stake in the stock market.

i don’t know how that would work or if people would be easily dispossessed of it the same way indians were swindled out of their land allotments in oklahoma.

but in a post-labor era when we’ll start to be replaced by automation and artificial intelligence, it might be a way forward

That's the point.


Yeah, possibly the worst idea I've heard since ... I dunno ... ever?

no that wasn’t. there were several things being tested:

i’ll be a deadbeat customer and copypaste you this short article:

https://www.economist.com/finance-an...ork-incentives

Finland’s basic-income trial did not much affect work incentives

Among the adherents of universal basic income (ubi) are the Italian government, India’s opposition party and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman in America. Boosters argue that a minimum income would be a safety-net for people in precarious jobs—eg, those at risk of being displaced by automation. Others see a way of eliminating complex, even corrupt, social-security bureaucracies.

Naysayers, horrified by the potential cost of ubi, fret that state handouts will put recipients off work. Early results from Finland’s basic-income experiment, released on February 8th, suggest that such fears are overdone, but don’t resolve much else.

Researchers randomly chose 2,000 people on the dole to receive for two years a monthly payment of €560 ($634) instead, whether or not they sought or started work. After a year, recipients were no less likely to be working than those on the dole. On average, both groups worked nearly 50 days a year and earned around €4,250.

Some ubi supporters may be disappointed that the scheme did not increase time worked. Unlike other benefits, which are withdrawn as claimants find work and so tend to discourage them from accepting a job offer, the basic income creates no such disincentive, because it is paid even after claimants take up work. But most proponents do not see employment as ubi’s primary goal. They will be cheered by the fact that the participants reported being happier.

There are limits to the lessons from the experiment. The results only assess its first year. Even the trial’s full two-year duration—a time period settled on because of a lack of resources, and ministerial impatience—may not be enough to observe changes to behaviour, says Minna Ylikännö, a researcher on the project. The scheme was also restricted to the unemployed. Other pilots, such as that funded by y Combinator, a startup accelerator, in America, will also shed light on how low earners might respond if they are paid a basic income. Evidence so far is scant. But that has not stopped Italy, which begins its “citizens’ income” scheme—a variant paying €780 a month to those living below the poverty line—in the spring. True believers need no proof

seriously? what’s the basis of your judgment?

here’s some stuff to think about

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse...egalitarianism

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lea...le26122852.ece

i have no position on the matter at this point but it’s worth considering since the purported problem of inequality is not one of income but of wealth

Trimp football pal was paying $70 at the "asian spa"

UBI can be sold any way, on any principle but the only reason governments are starting to consider it is because they face a social disaster as up-coming generations face a future with less and less real job opportunities. It'll be ushered in gradually using different rationales but the ultimate aim is to effectively normalise unemployment.

the purpose of production is consumption

if we can produce without employment—why not?

we’d get to retire at birth....

we’re all naturally rent seekers. as long as we don’t cheat or steal or manipulate others for it... i’ll take it

The Daily News for the WIN!!!

This will be a lot of people's sole income. If they want to play the stock market with it that's up to them I suppose but I'd rather those of who want to steer clear have that option too.

“playing” the stock market for civilians is just that... “playing”. a recipe for disaster. nobody beats the market in the long run. hence the genius of john bogle. actually he got the idea from a professor? but yeah he was the entrepreneur who turned that vapor into a reality: the index fund.

...

UBC: think about it as a trust fund.

see, the reason for the dreaded inequality is not one of “income” per se. it’s wealth.

when you’re born poor and come from nothing and maybe have the wrong hairdo one small fuckup can spiral into a lot of trouble. unpaid traffic tickets literally can land you in jail—im not joking. the u.s. still has debtors prisons in some jurisdictions. good luck finding a job as an ex-convict.

but when you have a wealth cushion you can fuck up and suffer misfortune and still come up smelling like roses.

and yes not everyone is great at managing their capital. people often squander their lives. maybe the bounty should be contingent on passing an economics course. i don’t know...

i just think that the future might very well be unemployed. and if income is tied to employment... good luck beating the robots

then again we might be to work at things we haven’t dreamed of yet.

but the way for the people to “own the means of production” is to ACTUALLY own them instead of trying to loot them. be a shareholder. PAY ME MY DIVIDENDS, COCA-COLA.

New UN Ambassadress....climate change denier and heavyweight R contributor, friend of Elaine Chao..


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2UFtm33dLB8&t=17s