ELI5:Why do people in gangs — who make money in illegitimate ways (drug dealing, robbing, scamming, etc.) live in poor, dangerous areas when they could operate in poor areas, but live in luxurious ones?

derleth · 12時間前

Doing what you seem to be imagining would run up against the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

Wikipedia has a whole article on the taxation of illegal income in the United States. It has these interesting sentences:

A person’s taxable income will generally be subject to the same Federal income tax rules, regardless of whether the income was obtained legally or illegally.

and

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that requiring a person to declare income on a federal income tax return does not violate an individual's right to remain silent,[2] although the privilege may apply to allow the person to refrain from revealing the source of the income.[3]

and this rather surprising result:

While embezzlers, thieves, and the like are forced to report their ill-gotten gains as income for tax purposes, they may also take deductions for costs relating to criminal activity.

Yale has a PDF on the subject.

derleth · 12時間前

More evidence that anyone who sees the sovereign debt as inherently a bad thing is economically illiterate.

derleth · 12時間前

OK, so personal attacks are only against the rules if they happen in an R1? Odd rule, but fine.

(I doubt the rule existed before my R1, but still, fine.)

derleth · 12時間前

Humans aren't horses, but this one's insane.

See, /u/wumbotarian? Personal attack.

derleth · 12時間前

So I'm supposed to ignore empirical fact and trust the models?

You're an Austrian, aren't you?

derleth · 12時間前

This was removed because you're personally attacking someone (Yglesias).

People personally attack others all the damned time in this sub.

derleth · 13時間前

If someone is arguing that we can reallocate labor, it's incredibly uncharitable to just assume they aren't also suggest appropriate amounts of retraining.

Which they assume will be cheap and easy enough that everyone will be able to complete it, as opposed to not having the tuition and/or not being skilled enough to finish a properly rigorous course.

derleth · 13時間前

So I should rely on that as opposed to the long history of monopolies around the world?

derleth · 13時間前

As long as they can't report on things which are demonstrably happening, they're no paragon of free speech.

derleth · 13時間前

As long as they have to obey the insane laws of the UK, they're a pet of the government and no standard for free press.

derleth · 13時間前

(Reposted to avoid deletion of this post by the moderators.)

R1:

I'm only posting this here because /r/blatantidiocy doesn't seem to exist. It's so self-contradictory and at odds with reality, you don't even need to be a money-talkin guy to take it down.

Most restaurants would keep longer hours (they're paying for the rent and the robots anyway), meaning many workers would get a raise and change shifts.

sigh

OK, moron, let's take it from the top:

The whole point to automation is to reduce labor costs.
Therefore, most workers will be fired in the ideal case you're positing.
Therefore therefore, the remaining workers sure as Hell will not be getting longer hours.
In fact, they will be getting effective pay cuts, because their hours will be shortened.

The advanced robo-restaurant technology would itself be a valuable American export good, and people would be employed in designing and selling it.

Ah, the classic dodge: "You'll lose your job, but somoene else will get a job!" It would be funny if it weren't borderline psychotic.

Let me give you a hint: I will care about that if and when that other person starts paying my expenses.

Some low-wage work would be reallocated out of the relatively low-social-value restaurant sector and into things like child care and home health assistance, for which there is ample demand.

Every time you say something new, you plumb new depths of utter fucking idiocy. Jesus Fucking Christ, how much do you want to kill kids and old people? Are you /u/wumbotarian in disguise, trying to drive me to Austrianism?

We already have a problem with nursing home/assisted living workers taking blatantly abusive pictures of the people in their care and posting them to social media. How much more of that do you want?

Yes, yes, "more training, better screening". Guess what: That destroys your whole argument. If people could afford more training, they wouldn't be working at Olive Garden to begin with, and if they could pass employment screening, they wouldn't be working back-of-house at Joe's Crab Shack.

Since poor people are now making more money, there will be opportunities to sell them things — things like restaurant meals! — that they couldn't previously afford, which in turn creates demand for new jobs.

Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence.

Really, there's no point in dissecting this one. I've already destroyed the foundations it rests upon.

Right now the retirement age is rising from 65 to 67, and most people think it will have to go up to 70. If robots can do a lot of the work instead, we could put it back down to 65 or even to 62 while still growing the economy.

HOW? No, really, that is such a big fucking non sequitur I can't believe I just read it. Do you honestly think robots pay taxes? Do you honestly think businesses will accept a tax increase after they fire employees and invest in robots?

We could give more financial support to college students so fewer of them are doing part-time food service work.

Yep. They'll be doing precisely the jobs you're assuming we just automated away.

Stop talking. Just stop talking. You're apparently losing brain cells with every goddamned word.

derleth · 13時間前

The BBC has to comply with the same rules, laws, and regulations around filming on the Parliament estate as everyone else.

And as long as that's the law, they're a muzzled pet of the government.

derleth · 13時間前

Well, they do have to obey the law.

And as long as the law is like that, they're a muzzled pet of the government.

derleth · 13時間前

The only one making that assumption is you.

Wrong. Really, bizarrely wrong.

TIL competitive markets don't exist.

Not if the companies involved can help it, no. Not without government regulation.

derleth · 13時間前

Of course it was.

derleth · 13時間前

your betters

Stop trolling.

derleth · 23時間前

My take on this comment is that /u/derleth is suggesting that not all labour is the same, and that relocating low-skilled individuals (like those working at a McDonalds) are woefully inadequate to operate a nursing home.

Fucking FINALLY someone gets one of my points.

There is some merit to that argument. There is some skills training required before they can adequately care for the elderly, but there's no reason to believe that training becomes more easily attainable with automation.

Another intelligent point.

derleth · 23時間前

Considering Yglesias specifically didn't say that the restaurant would be entirely automatic

But that's the context into which he's speaking. That's the assumption everyone around him is making in this discussion.

He never said they would, so this is another uncharitable strawman.

My point is that he not only never fully addresses the problem, he never even seems to realize it is a serious problem.

There's something fucking wrong with you.

If you have no argument against my point, just say so.

I'm assuming competitive markets, yes.

Seems like an odd assumption, given the long history of monopolies and/or collusion.

derleth · 1日前

Monopolies are bad for consumers.

Irrelevant. No, really: This has no bearing on whether monopolies exist and certainly no bearing on whether abusive monopolies exist. Why did you mention it? Did you think it was somehow relevant? Is the idea that bad things happen somehow alien to you?

No matter what the market structure, at least some of the benefits of lower marginal costs will be passed on to consumers via lower costs.

OK, explain Standard Oil.

derleth · 1日前

And their biggest standard is keeping the government happy, apparently.

derleth · 1日前

BBC is typically considered one of the best standards for News Reporting

Yes, they always do what their masters tell them.

derleth · 1日前

In which case the problem is the slashing of the social safety net, not automation.

If you think the social safety net is going to be rebuilt, that's your problem.

Even under monopolies facing inelastic demand, reducing marginal cost will change the calculus such that the profit maximizing price is somewhat lower to increase quantity sold.

This sounds like the old Libertarian argument that we don't need anti-trust laws because the market will naturally break up abusive monopolies. Given what you just said, explain the massive profits Standard Oil posted until it was broken up. Or was John D. Rockefeller somehow not massively wealthy?

derleth · 1日前

Because workers do things that either increase revenue or decrease other costs? And the ones that don't either get fired or don't get hired to begin with?

If you're going to ignore the "more work in the same hours" fact, which actually does happen, then the simple thing to do is to wait until there's enough unemployment that labor prices are through the floor and hire people at Technically Not Slave wages. How is that a good thing for workers?

derleth · 1日前

Because of course Yglesias doesn't want us to expand the social safety net to take care of recently fired workers while they're looking for new jobs...

It doesn't matter what he wants, it matters what the Republican-controlled legislatures want.

By drastically reducing the costs of production.

The only thing that necessarily does is increase profits. Revenues - costs, correct?

derleth · 1日前

TIL the profit maximizing equation in competitive markets isn't MR = MC.

I never argued that.

No, your normative arguments have no bearing on its outcome as a positive statement.

Normative vs Positive is a Hell of a way to justify throwing someone out of work.

derleth

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