[GT] US election - It's 2020, what could possibly go wrong?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Red Slinger

This is something I've been thinking about in conjunction with UBI. If the average full-time work went from 40 hours a week to say 30 hours does that mean that more people could be employed to cover the 25% drop in hours worked per week? I'm not sure that the correlation would be anywhere near 25% more employment but I'm guessing the level of unemployment (for those that can and want to work) would decrease substantially. This would reduce EI payments, increase payroll taxes collected by the government and also would likely decrease the amount of other social programs (social services, policing, emergency services, etc.) If you combine this with a guaranteed basic income that is enough to not starve but not enough to not want to work it could potentially alleviate some of the budgetary and societal issues governments face.

That would help. But the deeper problem is that some people aren't capable of doing much more than routine labour, and routine labour is going to be increasingly automated out of existence.

The meritocratic notion that everyone should strive to be skilled knowledge-workers ignores the reality that a great many people simply aren't suited - either cognitively or temperamentally - to being skilled knowledge-workers. We haven't asked ourselves as a society what role those who are weaker cognitively or socially are going to play in the emerging economy because we can't admit those deficiencies even exist.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

Sounds like you would actually quite like modern China.

Yeah, I could do without the concentration camps, limits on free speech, and general human rights abuses. I'm essentially describing a Scandinavian model, but I think we need even tighter controls on corporate influence than they have.

[troutman]

Lara Trump served on the board of a company through which the Trump political operation spent more than $700 million.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/u...0-million.html

https://twitter.com/user/status/1339981085925642246

[Fuzz]

How this entire family isn't is prison I'll never know.

[cral12]

#PayItBack!

#LockThemUp!


This is the way...

[calculoso]

No wonder Trump wants to veto it...


Congress passes a bipartisan bill that actually fights corruption. How did that happen?
With one small change in the law, the Corporate Transparency Act combats grand corruption, terror financing, human trafficking, weapons smuggling and fraud.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna1251707

Last week, with veto-proof majorities in both chambers, Congress passed the annual defense spending bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act. The bill is expected to soon become law. Folded into the bill is the Corporate Transparency Act — a major bipartisan measure that, for the first time, would end the formation and use of anonymous shell companies in the United States. It’s the most significant anti-money-laundering and anti-corruption upgrade the U.S. has seen in a generation.

While many Americans assume that money laundering and financial crimes are primarily problems for small Caribbean islands or mountainous European countries, the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index currently ranks the United States as the second-largest financial secrecy hub in the world, ahead of Switzerland and behind only the Cayman Islands.

Right now, you can form a shell company (an entity with no real assets or operations) in any state without disclosing the identity of the true owners. In some states, you don’t need to list the name of any person associated with the business. Amazingly, in all 50 states, more information is needed to receive a library card than to form an anonymous company that can facilitate money laundering, tax evasion and corruption.

[FlameOn]

Trump's expected to drop a huge wave of pardons later today. Not clear who is on the list yet.
https://www.axios.com/trump-pardons-...c13558a96.html

Meanwhile acting Trump Defence Secretary Chris Miller suspending transition meetings and briefings with the incoming Biden administration in the middle of the biggest cyberattack in US history
https://www.axios.com/pentagon-biden...117784d60.html

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by calculoso

No wonder Trump wants to veto it...


Congress passes a bipartisan bill that actually fights corruption. How did that happen?
With one small change in the law, the Corporate Transparency Act combats grand corruption, terror financing, human trafficking, weapons smuggling and fraud.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna1251707

Too bad it's veto proof. No wonder he's planning pardons now.

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Just to shift gears a little bit back toward something positive...

I just received an email from our county supervisor of elections. Lots of details about how the election was run and how few challenges there were despite a pandemic. Based on their assessment, it was an overwhelming success in a year where turnout was a record high.

How record was that high turnout? In our county, 76.3% of the registered voters participated in this election which meant over 778 000 votes were cast just in this county. When general turnout is maybe a little more than 50%, that's an incredible turn of events. To me it underscores that America is still a strong democracy at the population level, and with a few more controls on executive power in place, it will remain a strong democracy for generations to come.

Still, one wonders where the other 23% of voters are, but I figure it boils down to people unable to vote or confused on how to do it properly under pandemic circumstances. I figure the turnout would be closer to 85-90% if not for the virus.

[direwolf]

Originally Posted by troutman

Lara Trump served on the board of a company through which the Trump political operation spent more than $700 million.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/u...0-million.html

https://twitter.com/user/status/1339981085925642246

So much corruption. It's equally infuriating and astonishing that these scumbags are all still walking around as free people. Any normal citizen would be in prison by now if they pulled this crap.

[activeStick]

Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan

I don't know about any of you, but it's laughable to think that most Americans have only a 40 hour work week in any meaningful job that is salary-based. Responsibilities seem to be nearly constant in most jobs and people are often working into the evenings and on weekends with increasing regularity. Throw in the fact that vacation time is rarely used and people don't want to call in sick for fear of losing their jobs. If we started by simply scaling all jobs back to a 40 hour work week that was rigidly held to, we would actually employ more people overall to do the same work. That might hurt profitability, but it would go a ways to dealing with un/underemployment.

My personal experience aligns to what you're saying, as well as what I've observed from others at our firm. I'm in a fairly senior role in consulting and while I'm not constantly going over 40 hours a week, week over week, it's a pretty regular occurrence. I had assumed when I was younger that as I moved up, working extra hours would vanish, but this definitely hasn't been the reality. A lot of this is due to meetings taking up a ton of the day where you can't do any of your actual work and for my industry specifically, meetings with teams that land outside my working hours that require my attendance (some offshore, but also some as simple as being out of the eastern time zone when I work out of the Pacific time zone). I do wonder if it's always been this way or if things have gotten worse over time.

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

capitalism is essentially unable to continue without the ability to grow and climate change needs stasis, we need to stop growing, we need to have less stuff

[Dion]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1339989080667516929

[direwolf]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1339934441704198145

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Dion

https://twitter.com/user/status/1339989080667516929

I disagree with Josh Hawley on everything and generally dislike him, but he at least seems to have a spine.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by activeStick

My personal experience aligns to what you're saying, as well as what I've observed from others at our firm. I'm in a fairly senior role in consulting and while I'm not constantly going over 40 hours a week, week over week, it's a pretty regular occurrence. I had assumed when I was younger that as I moved up, working extra hours would vanish, but this definitely hasn't been the reality. A lot of this is due to meetings taking up a ton of the day where you can't do any of your actual work and for my industry specifically, meetings with teams that land outside my working hours that require my attendance (some offshore, but also some as simple as being out of the eastern time zone when I work out of the Pacific time zone). I do wonder if it's always been this way or if things have gotten worse over time.

And technology isn't helping us? The faster we can do something the more of it we're expected to do.

[JohnnyB]

Some of my friends in consulting have found that their time is even more occupied since going to wfh. They used to be able to get some breaks in the day if they had travel to engagements or meetings in different locations, but since everything has become remote there's no more time like that blocked out in their calendars and the expectation is that people should be good to come right out of one meeting immediately into the next one all through the day.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by rubecube

I disagree with Josh Hawley on everything and generally dislike him, but he at least seems to have a spine.

It's a compelling enough speech. I really question what problem these $1200 checks are solving though. Does a one time check really do much for someone who's been out of work a few months because their industry is shut down? Should workers who've been working at home get them? It's such a random disbursement that doesn't offer any real help to people who really need it, and gives money to people who don't really need it.

Figure out a way to get the unemployment benefits enhanced and easier to process for people who are missing weeks and months of work to COVID instead.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

Some of my friends in consulting have found that their time is even more occupied since going to wfh. They used to be able to get some breaks in the day if they had travel to engagements or meetings in different locations, but since everything has become remote there's no more time like that blocked out in their calendars and the expectation is that people should be good to come right out of one meeting immediately into the next one all through the day.

Totally.

Nobody seems to keep regular hours anymore and when a few people are on the clock whenever, it forces everyone else to be pretty much.

Since working from home, I put in at least some time 7 days a week. My total number of hours hasn't increased, but there isn't a single day of the week that I am "off" now.

Probably showing my age here, but when I started as a junior doing field work, it was before cell phones were expected. They existed, but it was a luxury. We were given pagers and a roll of quarters. It was really easy to ignore work. Now with smart phones, work never stops.

[#-3]

For me the big problem I have had in my career is being unable to divest myself of work as my role has shifted to a more senior position.

They ask you to take on a project, its great opportunity/experience, you do it & succeed, you get the raise maybe even the good title and some adoration, but they don't give you the opportunity to divest yourself of old work, then they do it again and do it again.

At some point in time they need to replace you, but then they ask why they need to your place you when they aren't giving you some brand new job, and you are somehow left trying to explain that you've been doing two jobs for a couple years.

I think back in the day someone with my responsibility would have an assistant or intern that could keep a lot of the BS organized, once you got a program running smoothly, now your phone and calendar are expected to do that for you, but they have no filter so every time take charge of something it adds to the firehose of information blasting you in the face.