President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Interns, not paid staff.

 

Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they don't understand what you're saying. That is always your tack and it's not helpful.

For instance: If labor were a penny an hour, sure, it might not make sense to automate. Except that if automation were a certain price, employers would still automate just be to free of pesky human frailties and desires. You present any manufacturer with the option of a factory full of robots or 42-year-old dads at the same price, they would take the robots.

They would also take the robots at a somewhat higher price, I would suspect.

They would not take the robots at a far higher price.

I believe that is what Rick is saying. You are ascribing automation entirely to the price of labor, as in salary. But robots don't strike or take lunch breaks or require maternity leave or call in sick. That's part of the equation, too. You'll say that's all part of the "price" of labor. But some of us would argue that's the price of being human. And we're not dumb for it.

 

Some people are saying the so-called renovation of the Oval Office floors while Trump is working at his 19th Hole office is really just a ruse that allows the NSA to remove all the furniture and accessories and run them through MRIs in order to locate whatever electronic eavesdropping devices the Russians left behind during their private meetings with Trump in the OO. I wonder how long it will take us to learn what they found?

 

Such a sensitive little snowflake ...

Trump gets a folder full of positive news about himself twice a day

 

Veep candidate. Playing Charlie McCarthy to Karl Rove's W-loving Edgar Bergen, instead of being the McCain of the "Straight Talk Express." But go ahead and blame the media.

 

I'm just a puppet with low self-esteem!

 

Shoot, invite Al Franken over with a mirror.

 

Hey, they did a great job finding wiretapps in Trump Tower.

 

The medias logical explanation for this is that during the primary period when there are as many as 16 candidates, there is only so much time devoted to all of them--although your boy got more than his share, and that is the medias fault--but anyway as the candidates are weeded out you hear more about the rest. It is not a secret plot, just a matter of numbers. And negative things are said about all the candidates, but when there are only a few, you will hear it more. Of course all the campaigns have their own chance to get the oppo research out about their competitors.
Trump is a prick also.
(my original post may have gone through unfinished, had a phone call and may have hit post in error)

 

London looks to be doing well:

 

You're wrong. Automation/robots are nothing other than an investment in capital, and such investment is inherently risky. In the main it is a substitution of (relatively) high fixed costs for (relatively) low variable costs. I've done it and made money on it, and I've done it and lost my ass on it. It only tends to be worthwhile in very stable situations, in which the up-front investment can be recovered over the long haul.

Even if that weren't the case, this "price of being human," as you put it, is fairly consistent. For every hour's labor purchased, I'm going to get some fraction of that in actual labor provided. It costs me a helluva lot when we're talking about my most expensive labor; it's trivial when we're talking about my lowest-cost labor. So if given the choice, where am I going to try to apply it?

There never has been a fixed supply of work out there, and automation/robots, when appropriate, make us wealthier by freeing labor to do work that currently is left undone.

@RickStain is a project of mine. That is my tack with him. For the rest of the hoi polloi, I simply keep my sneer at the ready.

 

But North Korea!