I just wanted to say that I've really enjoyed the conversation you, Northside, Nook and the others that popped in have been having about San Francisco and the area. I've been there several times and love it, but have always been surprised (yes, it still surprises me) just how extreme the income inequality is and the vast differences in the quality of life within a short distance. I suppose many who live there tune it out much of the time, but it still blows me away. I love the area, though, god help me. My son, a 24 year old software developer in Austin who's already making 6 figures (yeah, proud Dad here!), is considering moving there, given the right opportunity. I'm not sure what to tell him.
Lol, What I learned from this thread is San Francisco, one of the most liberal towns in the country, is proof positive that liberal politics cause major income disparity. The exact opposite of what liberals claim to support!!! All of this straight from the mouths of liberals who are too naive to see it!!! This is priceless!!!!!
Of course I am sure that is all the fault of Ted Cruz and Texas!!!! lol!!!!!!!!!!! This is utterly priceless!!!!!!
Nice comeback!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There did that make you happy?????????????????????? Seriously though, you can't argue with the point I made.
You are conflating what is happening in the Valley with social policies that can stem its effects. It is a grave error. The Valley is creating technology that will automate away most of the jobs that make for the middle and upper middle class. It operates on a lean model where a privileged ingroup will gain innumerate benefits while everybody else who is unneeded is quickly discarded. Some of the most brilliant minds in the world are working on destroying everything you have ever believed in: the sanctity of work. The need for religion. The culture of child-bearing. We're talking about artificial wombs that will destroy the notion of sex and conventional coupling arrangements as reproductive necessity (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.05999.x/abstract), research that will extend human lifespans (for some privileged few) exponentially so that those people never have to confront the mystery of mortality (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/11/-sp-live-forever-extend-life-calico-google-longevity), and machines that are approaching the divine which stand not only to replace human jobs, but perhaps humanity itself. https://medium.com/basic-income/dee...-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49 While I'm not a big believer that we have the requisite knowledge to switch from these specific applications of machine learning to general artificial intelligence, believers like Kurzweil and Minsky are and were much cleverer than I, and who knows what the future holds? http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inherit.html Why would you need religion if you could create your own gods? Or if you were replaced with the intellectual heirs of humanity? Or at the very least, a source of outputs that could mean the destruction of most jobs as they are currently structured? --------------------------------- Basic income will become a need. The notion of working for your keep will become antiquated if it isn't already. Humanity will have to decide between vastly different visions of the future: “If you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” - Sergey Brin, 2004 “Google will fulfill its mission only when its search engine is AI-complete." - Larry Page, 2000 A good non-technical take, though 10000m view, on what is happening--Google hiring one of the pioneers in deep learning experts, Geoff Hinton, and the implications his research has on how artificial intelligence is evolving: http://www.wired.com/2014/01/geoffrey-hinton-deep-learning/ Then you have the flip side... "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." - Stephen Hawking But what many agree on: the future is unpredictable, but its effects are already being felt: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/ There are a lot more interesting debates we could be having on the topic, but I am not surprised that income inequality persists, in of all places, San Francisco--the beginning of what will happen in the rest of the world. After all, the largest cost to capital are human inputs, and software never strikes. It saddens me that your only contribution to this argument is gloating over the wrong cause.
Of course anyone can. I live here, and your analysis is totally wrong. Income disparity is in no way central to San Francisco and not other places. If Oklahoma had a boom industry you would see it much worse there. Instead you have just the more moderate disparity of poverty and lower-middle-class versus some elitist chunks of old, usually dissipating, money.
On my how terrible, well at least if we just confiscate more from the rich and redistribute it then we can fix all of those potential problems.
They aren't problems--they are solutions. That's what you get wrong. It is your beliefs that are on the line, not mine. A world without meaningless labor, less work needed to deploy ideas and data at scale, a world without antiquated family roles and dogma, and a world that needs no G/god(s) is something I find incredibly alluring. It's also what a lot of people are looking forward to build. But let's be very focused--it's definitely in my short-term economic self-interest to keep people who think like you thinking that nothing is wrong with giving capital the proceeds of labour that has been eliminated, and to not increase cap gains and top tier tax brackets. Probably not in any of our long-term interests though. Definitely not in your short-term interest either. Don't confuse causes for effects. The social safety net protects from this underlying movement--you are blaming your/our umbrella for the rain. And yes, the rain has already started a long time ago. This is a boring debate, though, to be frank ("don't raise taxes on the people with a non-null possibility of birthing strong artificial intelligence into the world!"). https://medium.com/@nivo0o0/when-ex...s-becomes-our-reality-74acafd65e26#.jt69jtenp https://deepmind.com/alpha-go.html Exponential curves are a bit*h. don't be stuck debating tax rates--you'll miss a lot.
It is lamentable that you can only frame information and experience through partisan allegiance, doubly so in racial threads where every other word out of your mouth is Sharpton or Jackson.
Don't worry. Soon we will all be worried about what to do with our newly acquired leisure time that science and compound interest has afforded us.
Keynes wasn't wrong--he was just ahead of the curve. And given how work has become embedded into all sorts of social and psychological parts of America, I don't think it's ever going to be that easy (the not worrying part).
