Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.

link

"Uh, hello. I'm calling from the White House. I'm looking for a cost estimate for a moat filled with snakes. Is that something you can do?"

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

——

Just wanted to say what a great thread title this is! I’m not normally a narcissist, but I will take this chance to brag on myself.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Coffee. Keyboard.

Really? Because I'm not certain Trump isn't a closet student of Egyptian poets with an interest in political entropy. He could be. His rants on Nasser's execution of Qutb as a flashpoint for the start of Islamic extremism indicate not only a fixation with the culture, but consumption of significant, balanced scholarship on Egyptian society generally.

I don't think you or Adder are giving Trump a fair shake on this. His seminal college thesis, "IMF-Funded High Rises in Cairo: A Beautiful Solution to Urban Crowding" exposes a nimble yet reverent view of the country and its people.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Things are broken because we have a federal political system that requires consensus, and we don't have consensus. We have been moving away from consensus since the end of the Cold War and when Gingrich started remaking the Republican Party.

We don't have consensus because we don't even raise the issues that need to be discussed. Those of us doing fine pretend it's all good; those of us fucked get no say in policy.

Doesn't matter who's in power, Ds or Rs. Losers historically got no say. Well, Trump just organized the losers quite effectively, while winking to the selfish and the cynical. So now the people who want a tax break get to ride a new and expanded wave of votes for their lucre.

And what may the Ds say? Nothing serious in response. Why? Because the Ds aren't offering anything more than expanded handouts. They don't even have a serious fucking policy except for cancelling student loans.

We have two useless parties grappling for power, and the whole fucking country knows the reality: We are moving to a world where half of the labor force will no longer be needed, and that is happening soon, on a timeline consistent with Moore's Law.

Consensus can only be met where two parties agree on what's happening. Without that, consensus is impossible. So you;re wrong, deeply wrong and deluded even, to blame it all on politics. What we have is an economic issue os immense gravity that our politicians and politics are not equipped to address. The economic issues are driving the politics. Until we start addressing those - with something other than tax cuts or enhanced safety nets, which are band aids and morphine highs for a terminal patient - we're fucked.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

We don't have consensus because we don't even raise the issues that need to be discussed. Those of us doing fine pretend it's all good; those of us fucked get no say in policy.

Doesn't matter who's in power, Ds or Rs. Losers historically got no say. Well, Trump just organized the losers quite effectively, while winking to the selfish and the cynical. So now the people who want a tax break get to ride a new and expanded wave of votes for their lucre.

And what may the Ds say? Nothing serious in response. Why? Because the Ds aren't offering anything more than expanded handouts. They don't even have a serious fucking policy except for cancelling student loans.

We have two useless parties grappling for power, and the whole fucking country knows the reality: We are moving to a world where half of the labor force will no longer be needed, and that is happening soon, on a timeline consistent with Moore's Law.

Consensus can only be met where two parties agree on what's happening. Without that, consensus is impossible. So you;re wrong, deeply wrong and deluded even, to blame it all on politics. What we have is an economic issue os immense gravity that our politicians and politics are not equipped to address. The economic issues are driving the politics. Until we start addressing those - with something other than tax cuts or enhanced safety nets, which are band aids and morphine highs for a terminal patient - we're fucked.

I don't understand where you think we disagree, but it's great rant.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I don't understand where you think we disagree, but it's great rant.

Okay. But here's what I hear from most Ds and Rs who are fortunate enough to be in the top 20% of the country:

I want a solution that does not change things for me. In fact, I want to earn more, even if it comes as a result of others earning less (there is a zero sum feature to a rentier economy as ours - the dollars we don't pay to those we can offshore or automate go into investors' and upper management and professionals' pockets).

Successful Ds don't mind paying more taxes. Nor do successful Rs, despite the stereotype. Nor do independents, like me.

Where all of us upper middle class to affluent folks reach consensus is on the issue of changing the game in such a way that our wages flatten, our futures are subjected to ceilings like those below us, and our kids' futures limited. The systemic changes that probably need to be implemented going forward strike us with fear because, as any person capturing all the gains of a dying industry understands, real change removes our security.

So left, right, middle -- those of us with power avoid the conversations Warren and Yang are entertaining. I mean, we listen to them, we know what's coming, and that it's coming for us, but we'd rather vote for a Biden, or even a Trump if we're on the right, because that's More of the Same. Even with Trump, it's predictable. He's just a classic populist, but also so capitalist that nothing truly revolutionary will happen that endangers our advantages.

Sure, we'll scream about how awful he is, but as almost every well heeled D I know has said when I say I like Warren, "Well, we can't elect her. She's too extreme."

Stated otherwise, I hate Trump, but I want to remove him and replace him with someone who is safe and won't do much, like Biden, because while I'm interested in saving the environment and keeping kids out of cages, I don't want to elect anyone who might eat into my revenues. I like the system as it is. I think I can give a little more at the margins to combat inequality, but I don't want structural change that might impede mine or my kids' gains. Keep the economy delivering for me.

So regarding consensus, maybe we're wrong. Maybe we have a lot of consensus already - at least where it matters. All the people doing well are all agreeing that things are just terrible and ought to be fixed, but only if that fix does not change our economy in ways that impact our revenue.

And I use "revenue" for a reason. Because it's no sacrifice for anyone pulling down half a million a year to willingly give up an extra $10-20k in income taxes to provide some enhanced safety nets for the poor. It's quite another thing to elect someone who'd entertain a policy-based restructuring of the economy that drops that person's value to a point where he only brings home $300k per year.

Anyone will trade you five, ten, twenty thousand at the margin to keep the revenue the same. The person who's really serious about remedying inequality will agree to see his industry gored to allow the dollars inefficiently and inequitably piled up within it diverted to more productive uses elsewhere.

Hello, health care, law, accounting, finance, and real estate! Looking right at you.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Okay. But here's what I hear from most Ds and Rs who are fortunate enough to be in the top 20% of the country:

I want a solution that does not change things for me. In fact, I want to earn more, even if it comes as a result of others earning less (there is a zero sum feature to a rentier economy as ours - the dollars we don't pay to those we can offshore or automate go into investors' and upper management and professionals' pockets).

Successful Ds don't mind paying more taxes. Nor do successful Rs, despite the stereotype. Nor do independents, like me.

Where all of us upper middle class to affluent folks reach consensus is on the issue of changing the game in such a way that our wages flatten, our futures are subjected to ceilings like those below us, and our kids' futures limited. The systemic changes that probably need to be implemented going forward strike us with fear because, as any person capturing all the gains of a dying industry understands, real change removes our security.

So left, right, middle -- those of us with power avoid the conversations Warren and Yang are entertaining. I mean, we listen to them, we know what's coming, and that it's coming for us, but we'd rather vote for a Biden, or even a Trump if we're on the right, because that's More of the Same. Even with Trump, it's predictable. He's just a classic populist, but also so capitalist that nothing truly revolutionary will happen that endangers our advantages.

Sure, we'll scream about how awful he is, but as almost every well heeled D I know has said when I say I like Warren, "Well, we can't elect her. She's too extreme."

Stated otherwise, I hate Trump, but I want to remove him and replace him with someone who is safe and won't do much, like Biden, because while I'm interested in saving the environment and keeping kids out of cages, I don't want to elect anyone who might eat into my revenues. I like the system as it is. I think I can give a little more at the margins to combat inequality, but I don't want structural change that might impede mine or my kids' gains. Keep the economy delivering for me.

So regarding consensus, maybe we're wrong. Maybe we have a lot of consensus already - at least where it matters. All the people doing well are all agreeing that things are just terrible and ought to be fixed, but only if that fix does not change our economy in ways that impact our revenue.

And I use "revenue" for a reason. Because it's no sacrifice for anyone pulling down half a million a year to willingly give up an extra $10-20k in income taxes to provide some enhanced safety nets for the poor. It's quite another thing to elect someone who'd entertain a policy-based restructuring of the economy that drops that person's value to a point where he only brings home $300k per year.

Anyone will trade you five, ten, twenty thousand at the margin to keep the revenue the same. The person who's really serious about remedying inequality will agree to see his industry gored to allow the dollars inefficiently and inequitably piled up within it diverted to more productive uses elsewhere.

Hello, health care, law, accounting, finance, and real estate! Looking right at you.

GGG said the budgetary process has been broken for a while. Adder said everything has been broken. I think he was talking about how things get done on the Hill, hence my response. You are, as is often your wont, off on a rant about how the wealthy are busy heightening the contradictions for the great unwashed. It may or may not have been over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, but there is no stopping you when you're on a roll.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Really? Because I'm not certain Trump isn't a closet student of Egyptian poets with an interest in political entropy. He could be. His rants on Nasser's execution of Qutb as a flashpoint for the start of Islamic extremism indicate not only a fixation with the culture, but consumption of significant, balanced scholarship on Egyptian society generally.

I don't think you or Adder are giving Trump a fair shake on this. His seminal college thesis, "IMF-Funded High Rises in Cairo: A Beautiful Solution to Urban Crowding" exposes a nimble yet reverent view of the country and its people.

And... you pushed it too far.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

GGG said the budgetary process has been broken for a while. Adder said everything has been broken. I think he was talking about how things get done on the Hill, hence my response. You are, as is often your wont, off on a rant about how the wealthy are busy heightening the contradictions for the great unwashed. It may or may not have been over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, but there is no stopping you when you're on a roll.

You ignore the point. This isn't a budget issue. It isn't a Beltway dysfunction issue.

It's a general societal refusal to address a malfunctioning market.

Why? Because the malfunctioning market delivers for some of us, so we don't want to see it realigned.

Examples:

1. Inefficient valuations of work.

Your broker, lawyer, CPA, professor, CEO, marketing manager, etc. are grossly overpaid relative to their value. If we didn't command the pay we do, that money would be available to be paid to other workers. But we do command that pay. Only it's not because we're worth it (I'm using a bit of Marxist "intrinsic valuation," which is a valid concept which needs to be introduced into policy discussions). It's because we've: (1) taken on fixed costs; and, (2) acquired licenses. This leads to #2.

2. Unjustifiable fixed costs to reach high paying positions.

To get a top job, one needs a degree, preferably a top degree. This costs money. Lots of money. Because of this, compensation must be greater and greater for people who are in the top 20% (at a minimum, it has to keep up with inflation in higher education costs). If you've run a business, you know that the price of a solid VP is probably about 30% higher than it ought to be, but, well, ya gotta pay it. So you find that 30% by not paying someone else - someone lower. You eliminate a customer service or assistant position and spread that labor among other assistants and customer service personnel.

In this regard, within companies, you've a zero sum competition for compensation, won in almost all instance by the higher tier employees.

3. Credentialism/License leveraging schemes

"License leveraging" isn't my word, but Milton Friedman's. He's wrong about a lot, but not about this. This is a huge tax on lower skilled workers and an insidious bar to their wage enhancement.

To do almost anything of value in this country anymore outside tech, one must acquire a license of some sort. There must be degrees, certifications, and continuing education required, at enormous cost. This effectively creates guilds. It also creates commoditization of labor, as HR screening tools eliminate non-traditionally educated, but often much better skilled workers (one can't rise up from the mail room to CEO in an age where screening software never even allows one to interview to join the company).

Pilots, doctors, electricians, people who engineer bridges - these types of people need baseline credentials. But do all these people with these strange aggregations of random letters behind their names - who work in white collar professions largely pushing papers or money around in circles - need all these licenses and credentials? Of course not. It was only a century ago, before law became a guild, that lawyers did not need law degrees. They could and did simply pass a test.

If we eliminated 50% of licensing, and limited the necessity of it to professions where malpractice could actually physically harm a person, we'd open "the ladder" up to a lot of competition. We'd give a lot of little guys who can't afford the time or investment involved in joining our license-leveraging scheme to make a living for themselves.

Tech is doing some of this for us already, but the guilds are sticky, and powerful. They lobby for licensing requirements to the death. And they work hand in hand with Big Education, which uses the need to acquire credentials as a lever to force people to pay it ungodly sums of tuition. There aren't enough Uber business models out there to destroy the power of the licensing agencies and credential mills quickly enough.

- - -

These are just a couple examples of the way artificial barriers in our society maintain a status quo that favors an undeserving top 20%. I can say this because I've been part of that top 20% through my life. Why? Because I had advantages. Daddy could pay for things. Is life fair? Of course not. But should we have a national conversation where we discuss why we need to dismantle many of the mechanisms that bar people from rising? How this is deeply un-American, anti-innovation? How it's not a fix for this to say, "I'll hand out some crumbs in the form of increased taxes on my unjustifiably increasing income to the people at the bottom." (Why that's the most cynical form of noblesse oblige.)

There are about a hundred policy fixes we could and should discuss, and they all involve redistribution of a sort. But I don't see these things being discussed very much because they all share the same feature: Devaluing the Top 20% to effect a transfer of their indefensible income to the lower classes, who are grossly underpaid. (Run the disparity between a nurse and a VP of marketing and tell me how anyone can defend that delta. Or a teacher and corporate lawyer.)

The market is not delivering. But we can fix it, and I dare say it's simple -- make it freer, so those of us who enjoy protected high wages can sink to parity with those who don't. By eliminating a lot of licensing and credentialing requirements, we could move to a fairer value - introducing a stealth form of intrinsic valuation of labor without even mentioning Marx - almost overnight.

That's the conversation we need to be having, rather than comparing the noblesse oblige bona fides of two useless political parties.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

We don't have consensus because we don't even raise the issues that need to be discussed.

This is just absolute, revisionist bullshit.

TM

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You ignore the point. This isn't a budget issue. It isn't a Beltway dysfunction issue.

It's a general societal refusal to address a malfunctioning market.

Why? Because the malfunctioning market delivers for some of us, so we don't want to see it realigned.

Examples:

1. Inefficient valuations of work.

Your broker, lawyer, CPA, professor, CEO, marketing manager, etc. are grossly overpaid relative to their value. If we didn't command the pay we do, that money would be available to be paid to other workers. But we do command that pay. Only it's not because we're worth it (I'm using a bit of Marxist "intrinsic valuation," which is a valid concept which needs to be introduced into policy discussions). It's because we've: (1) taken on fixed costs; and, (2) acquired licenses. This leads to #2.

2. Unjustifiable fixed costs to reach high paying positions.

To get a top job, one needs a degree, preferably a top degree. This costs money. Lots of money. Because of this, compensation must be greater and greater for people who are in the top 20% (at a minimum, it has to keep up with inflation in higher education costs). If you've run a business, you know that the price of a solid VP is probably about 30% higher than it ought to be, but, well, ya gotta pay it. So you find that 30% by not paying someone else - someone lower. You eliminate a customer service or assistant position and spread that labor among other assistants and customer service personnel.

In this regard, within companies, you've a zero sum competition for compensation, won in almost all instance by the higher tier employees.

3. Credentialism/License leveraging schemes

"License leveraging" isn't my word, but Milton Friedman's. He's wrong about a lot, but not about this. This is a huge tax on lower skilled workers and an insidious bar to their wage enhancement.

To do almost anything of value in this country anymore outside tech, one must acquire a license of some sort. There must be degrees, certifications, and continuing education required, at enormous cost. This effectively creates guilds. It also creates commoditization of labor, as HR screening tools eliminate non-traditionally educated, but often much better skilled workers (one can't rise up from the mail room to CEO in an age where screening software never even allows one to interview to join the company).

Pilots, doctors, electricians, people who engineer bridges - these types of people need baseline credentials. But do all these people with these strange aggregations of random letters behind their names - who work in white collar professions largely pushing papers or money around in circles - need all these licenses and credentials? Of course not. It was only a century ago, before law became a guild, that lawyers did not need law degrees. They could and did simply pass a test.

If we eliminated 50% of licensing, and limited the necessity of it to professions where malpractice could actually physically harm a person, we'd open "the ladder" up to a lot of competition. We'd give a lot of little guys who can't afford the time or investment involved in joining our license-leveraging scheme to make a living for themselves.

Tech is doing some of this for us already, but the guilds are sticky, and powerful. They lobby for licensing requirements to the death. And they work hand in hand with Big Education, which uses the need to acquire credentials as a lever to force people to pay it ungodly sums of tuition. There aren't enough Uber business models out there to destroy the power of the licensing agencies and credential mills quickly enough.

- - -

These are just a couple examples of the way artificial barriers in our society maintain a status quo that favors an undeserving top 20%. I can say this because I've been part of that top 20% through my life. Why? Because I had advantages. Daddy could pay for things. Is life fair? Of course not. But should we have a national conversation where we discuss why we need to dismantle many of the mechanisms that bar people from rising? How this is deeply un-American, anti-innovation? How it's not a fix for this to say, "I'll hand out some crumbs in the form of increased taxes on my unjustifiably increasing income to the people at the bottom." (Why that's the most cynical form of noblesse oblige.)

There are about a hundred policy fixes we could and should discuss, and they all involve redistribution of a sort. But I don't see these things being discussed very much because they all share the same feature: Devaluing the Top 20% to effect a transfer of their indefensible income to the lower classes, who are grossly underpaid. (Run the disparity between a nurse and a VP of marketing and tell me how anyone can defend that delta. Or a teacher and corporate lawyer.)

The market is not delivering. But we can fix it, and I dare say it's simple -- make it freer, so those of us who enjoy protected high wages can sink to parity with those who don't. By eliminating a lot of licensing and credentialing requirements, we could move to a fairer value - introducing a stealth form of intrinsic valuation of labor without even mentioning Marx - almost overnight.

That's the conversation we need to be having, rather than comparing the noblesse oblige bona fides of two useless political parties.

No one was discussing the bona fides, noblesse oblige or otherwise, of the two political parties.

Your 1. point is Froot Loops. If that work wasn't valued, people wouldn't pay for it.

Your 2. is also fairly loopy. If you think you can hire uncredentialed people who will do just as well, go do it, and undercut your competitors. But you can't. And companies also get rid of high-paying jobs to hire less expensive workers.

Your 3. is not loopy, but to say that it is a problem more important than Beltway paralysis is just silly. As a resident of California who just had his hair cut by someone who needed a state license, I get it, but did that add $1 of the $17 tab (before tip)? If you want to talk about the ways that the haves have rigged the system to serve their interests and screw the have-nots, talk about zoning. The rents in so much of the country are too damn high.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

This is just absolute, revisionist bullshit.

TM

Sebastian just told us that there are a lot of Republicans who want to do something about climate change. Clearly, the reason we don't have action on climate change has nothing to do with congressional dysfunction, and everything to do with unnecessary occupational licensing.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Sebastian just told us that there are a lot of Republicans who want to do something about climate change. Clearly, the reason we don't have action on climate change has nothing to do with congressional dysfunction, and everything to do with unnecessary occupational licensing.

It's not just that they want to do something. They "are embracing the urgent need to do something about climate change."



http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/...te-speech.html

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

No one was discussing the bona fides, noblesse oblige or otherwise, of the two political parties.

Your 1. point is Froot Loops. If that work wasn't valued, people wouldn't pay for it.

Your 2. is also fairly loopy. If you think you can hire uncredentialed people who will do just as well, go do it, and undercut your competitors. But you can't. And companies also get rid of high-paying jobs to hire less expensive workers.

Your 3. is not loopy, but to say that it is a problem more important than Beltway paralysis is just silly. As a resident of California who just had his hair cut by someone who needed a state license, I get it, but did that add $1 of the $17 tab (before tip)? If you want to talk about the ways that the haves have rigged the system to serve their interests and screw the have-nots, talk about zoning. The rents in so much of the country are too damn high.

1. You ignore my point about about introducing instrinsic valuation to the discussion.

2. I cannot hire people without certain credentials because the guilds prohibit it. That's the whole point.

I've managed a lot more people than you have. I'm not bragging. It's just dumb circumstance that I happened to manage people, and trust me -- I didn't want to do it and don't want to do it again.

I found credentials (advanced degrees and certifications) were really poor indicators of who could succeed in a position. Because I like to do things like this, I gave huge responsibility to people I judged to be smart based on other factors. I gave one a five figure raise. I never had a problem. Except for the people who had credentials, who really resented taking orders from those who didn't. But YMMV.

A layman can't perform heart surgery, but a paralegal can certainly practice a good bit of law, a non-CPA tax preparer is every bit as good as a CPA in most instances, and a fund manager with a CFA is not delivering magical returns relative to one without.

3. Re zoning, agreed. As I said, there are numerous ways we rig the system.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Sebastian just told us that there are a lot of Republicans who want to do something about climate change. Clearly, the reason we don't have action on climate change has nothing to do with congressional dysfunction, and everything to do with unnecessary occupational licensing.

Oh, you're quick to cite the environment. Why? Because that's one where you can duck the issues I raised.

"Look, I care about something the GOP does not!"

That's true. You also care about kids in cages.

But then, most sane people care about kids in cages. You remind me of Chris Rock's joke about people who brag that they "take care of their kids": "You're supposed to take care of your kids. You don't get credit for that!"

You're picking and choosing what you care about and hiding the limousine liberal character of upper middle class D politics. (Which isn't very far from the character of upper middle class R politics.)

I think Phil Ochs wrote a song about this, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal." Jello Biafra covered it a few years ago.

BTW, I'm with you. I don't really want to change the system. I'm only interested in cutting through the bullshit "fixes" both parties are offering. We won't really ever tackle inequality. I'll just have the satisfaction of saying, "I knew that," point at upper middle class Ds doing their hand-wringing and lamenting how the evil Rs fuck the poor and say, "they know it too... they just lack the balls to admit their selfishness."