It's not a subtle ad. Google has sold the top slots of your search to companies in exchange for money.
When your search for "Excel", Google doesn't try to find you the most relevant result. They find you the highest paying ad, and then what you're searching for.
Seriously, I don't know why this is news.
Wait, yes I do, half the population is stupid.
"That's not how the market works."
I've had to have this conversation so many times I feel like I'm losing my mind. Like I need to write a manifesto or blog post that I can reference instead of rewriting it every time.
Markets are not moral.
Market forces are like physical forces - we observe them and use that knowledge to predict the outcomes of situations. But by the same token we need to have a moral framework underpinning the way we use the knowledge, or else we will destroy the world.
Justifying low wages by saying "people are willing to take the job" is just saying "people would rather do this job than be homeless, starve, or be poor_er_."
I, personally, am fundamentally not okay with an economy that is fully supported by workers essentially being coerced into working from fear of death or despair.
We look at the nuclear bomb and the damage it caused and say "that was bad, let's not do that". But we look at inflation, wealth accumulation, class warfare, rampant shameless greed, and don't immediately see the cause/effect relationship.
Now the conversation about some work being harder, more unpleasant, more stressful, or more valuable than other work is an important one. But in my mind the important part is removing the coersion.
If people had their basic needs met and didn't fear starvation or homeless, I bet employers would have to give their workers a better shake in order to keep things running.
Yes.
This is the thing people don't understand about a ubi.
I had a coworker who's wife was a... Case manager? For welfare. Her whole job was determining whether or not people were lying/exaggerating about various elements of their claim.
First of all, government union paper pushers make decent money. There was an entire office full of people that covered cases in their region only.
Second, it's a soul sucking job. Her primary assumption was that everyone was cheating and lying and she needed to minimize everyone's payout.
UBI solves both of those things and by plugging it directly into the tax system people can be free to try to earn a better living, which studies have shown most people want when they are given a UBI.
Increased productivity, increased employment, increased entrepreneurship, increased mental health outcomes, there is literally no downside except for needing to tax the rich.
That's because the manager is incentivized to not help you, while the union is incentivized to help you.
Unions are game-theoretically necessary.
If you don't like the price hikes CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION.
Stop with all the belly aching. They cancel all the good shows early anyway. I killed my sub years ago and it's been a great choice.
Bank profits inflate the money supply.
If banks hold 100% of the money and lend it all out x10 (fractional reserve) and earn 1% interest, the money supply is growing by 10% per year.
That's inflation. All that money goes to the banks.
Edit: that's 1% on top of whatever they have to pay for the money from the fed, so 7% rate plus 1%, or whatever.
That doesn't even account for the stock market and other speculative devices.
When business and the wealthy class get richer, they want to get even RICHER. Prices rise. Which drives record profit, which makes rich people wealthier, which causes the cycle to repeat.
Raising interest rates is SUPPOSED to make people uncomfortable and stop spending. It's not working yet, because literally EVERY INCENTIVE IN OUR SOCIETY is pushing people to spend spend spend.
There is no functional market force driving down housing costs, food costs, or education costs. Unchecked capitalism can't work.
We just need proper incentive structures and regulation. But seeing as nobody has the guts to start figuring that out, the only lever we have is interest rates.
So they'll keep going up until something breaks.
In Gaben we trust.
When he's gone I assume it will go to shit.
No, you're not understanding.
They save money by only producing the luxury model. Then they disable the feature electronically.
But to prevent you from just jailbreaking the car, they need to have a system to monitor your status. So they need to be able to check and update software that you can't control, etc etc.
It's still greed, but it's like greed with extra steps.
People were objecting to the subscription, but they should have been objective to the locked features.
They'll never stop the shitification, it maximizes profit.
Yeah, "the economy" doesn't mean anything.
More commerce just means more money changing hands. Unemployment rate just measures jobs. None of this impacts the average person.
Buying power is down and has been dropping for longer than I've been alive. This especially impacts the low and vanishing middle class Americans.
As I get older I begin to realize that people love to work.
However people hate being treated like shit.
Treating people like shit or building an environment that supports shitty behavior poisons the well and will absolutely make people leave, even for a pay cut.
If you just respect people and properly value them and their contributions to your organization, you'll never have trouble keeping them.
What? You voted to support someone ELSE'S freedom?
Blasphemy.