The Glade 4.0

Its the kind that can hold their right knee up at odd heights for extended periods of time?

I'm really worried about what's going to happen to the economy and government budgets as a huge amount of young people enter the workforce and learn that heading straight to welfare is literally their best option, or the ones working at Wal-Mart or wherever waiting until "conditions improve" realize that conditions will never improve, and that they have basically no chance of ever advancing in any position as the entire workforce has skipped their generation. For a lot of people their college degree doesn't qualify them for any job that pays more than welfare does. I personally got lucky and got some experience before the bottom completely fell out so I'm still somewhat employable, but I'm now seeing requirements of a Master's Degree and 5-years experience for an "entry-level" position paying $14/hour.

Remind me who you said was insane when I said we were heading that way a little while ago.

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I never disagreed with you that we're awarding too many degrees, I just never liked the idea of limiting it based on ridiculous arbitrary factors (like making mechanical engineers master Latin) that provide no benefit to anyone other than reducing the amount of degrees awarded.

The total lack of employment for my generation is just terrifying. When I say welfare is the best option, I'm not referring to a lack of work ethic, I mean that for many people they have basically no prospects of ever outearning welfare even if they work their asses off at some job for 5+ years and have the best performance reviews ever. Normally such employees in retail and fast food get bumped up to manager with a higher salary, but getting a manager position requires there be one available, and with companies closing stores and people not retiring, there aren't any. Instead they just hit the glass ceiling of $8 or $9/hour for such positions and can never advance further. Continuing education is also questionable, I have a friend who graduated this year in Biology and not only are there are no jobs for him, further education is also pointless. He's looked into things like going for pharmacy tech or med tech and the best of these programs now have class sizes at least five times the expected placement. Yeah. that's a great investment to spend $10,000+ on, and that's a field that's supposed to have excellent growth potential. What's worse is you have middle-aged people in these programs who have been working for 20-30 years, and it doesn't matter if you have a 4.0 GPA and glowing recommendations from everyone, a 27-year old is simply not getting hired over a 50-year old for the same job with the same certificate.

Just get a degree in engineering or CS and you won't have many issues.

http://mashable.com/2010/04/29/vc-recovery-2/

Not that kind either... in fact, I don't even know what kind that is.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's the Captain Morgan kind.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Its a metric used to measure the mean increase in the cost of goods in dollars which MAY be a symptom of inflation (an increase in the money supply).

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Is it the kind that goes with "and Tennile"? because I think that market is flooded already.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Yet the quality of goods increases quickly regardless of the economy being in a "good" or "bad" state. Fact is my computer is ~30 times more powerful than my computer 10 years ago. I'm pretty sure that industrial processes are much more efficient as well.

Defining quality is subjective though. I'd rather have a few things that were made years ago because they last longer than now or have easier upkeep. A truck with a carburetor for example.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Not that kind either..

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Another useful question may be... what is the answer for those "educated" recent graduates with no experience?

I used to be all "man this sucks, what am I gonna do for another year until this gets better". Now I... probably should just skip over these threads cause it makes me think bad things.

Moore's law does not apply in other areas.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Yes it does, but in different ways.

Care to elaborate?

My shirt is not exponentially better than a shirt 10 years ago, nor is it exponentially cheaper. Manufacturing processes are not exponentially more efficient. People don't live exponentially longer thanks to healthcare.

I'd be interested to hear of any other field to which you feel Moore's law applies.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

You could say the same about memory: "Memory is not exponentially better than it was 10 weeks ago, nor is it exponentially cheaper". Everything in the short-term can be approximated linearly. Shirts can be made better and cheaper than 100 years ago from advancing technology, availability of goods, etc. Just on a very rough scale if you plotted out the quality of clothing per cost every 10 years throughout the last 400 years, you would see an exponential increase. I think it is safe to say that machines will 100% automate making all our clothing in the future, and it will become very cheap.

Our average life span increases 3 months every year. If you don't believe me, look up the data. Obviously this isn't a linear trend or the average life span would already be thousands of years old. So this is exponential as well. It is idiotic to think people don't live longer due to healthcare. The life span in 1919 is 56.34 for a white male in the U.S. In 2003, 75.3. In 2004, 75.7. That's a rather enormous increase that you are just oblivious to.

Shirts can be made faster; they can be made cheaper; they are not necessarily better. Fabric quality continues to decline in pursuit of more economic end products that function at the disposable commodity level.

If, indeed, you are truly interested in the economics of textiles, Lex; I'd ask you tell me why Linen sheets are so horrendously expensive despite the abundance of flax friendly land in major cotton producing areas.

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I would say that there's not enough demand for high-quality fabrics. People just don't care enough. However, I'd wager that print designs that go on many shirts are more sophisticated and don't wash out as easily. There's more styles available every year. It's easy to find the exact shirt you want online. By 2015 there will commonly be computer chips embedded in clothing... that seems to be an exponential advance to me.



http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/32237/f ... technology

I just hope we have the courage now to put in place policies, however painful in the short term, that will enable me to look forward to, 15 years hence, actually having my children leave my house to find homes of their own.

You seem to be confused about how things work in The USSA. "Find" something of "their own?" What's that supposed to mean. When your child reaches 30, his/her application for housing, submitted when he/she was 5, will finally be processed, and then the State will issue them custodianship of a State-owned studio apartment.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Well then, I'm already late. Better get crackin'! I should probably get some government employee to help me fill out the form to get someone to fill out the housing request for me.

Bit of a necropost, sure, but I found this educational music video today:

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