[CA renter]

For one thing, phaster, while you’ve been obsessing about what other people’s benefits are costing, there are people who’ve been actively working on solutions to these problems. One part of the solution began about 20 years ago when public employers started to get rid of retiree healthcare…which will begin affecting retirement ages (causing them to go up) within the next 10 years as employees without retiree healthcare stay on longer in order to retain their medical coverage. This is something that is not yet being calculated in the actuarial data, and may never be included, even though it will have a fairly significant effect, especially WRT public safety workers. In 2013, PEPRA was enacted, and many employees are receiving lower benefits and paying more toward their retirement. Over the past few years, employers have also been renegotiating contracts, and employees have been paying more toward their retirement and healthcare costs — even longer-term employees are being affected.

More solutions are being worked on at this very moment, and we’ll begin to see a combination of changes within the next 2-3 years, IMO, as benefit formulas are reevaluated and contribution requirements are updated.

All that being said, I still can’t help but wonder if you like to focus so much on the benefits that have been **earned** by public employees in order to distract people’s attention from the multi-billion dollar annual giveaway to property owners such as yourself in the form of Prop 13 subsidies. Most people favor Prop 13 protection for a single primary residence, but they strongly dislike subsidizing the profits of wealthy commercial and residential landlords, wealthy owners of large tracts of land, and entitled heirs of expensive California properties who did absolutely nothing to deserve these billions of dollars in tax subsidies every year.

If you truly care about the heath of our state and local economies, they you should be willing to take the first step yourself. We can discuss the costs of those who’ve earned their benefits AFTER those who have not earned their tax subsidies refuse/refund this money first. Go ahead…prove to everyone how much you care about the financial health of our governmental agencies by paying back your unearned subsidy first (thousands of dollars per year). After you’ve done that, then you can come back and talk to us about reducing the compensation that other people have actually worked for and earned.

BTW, you’re not educating or informing anyone of anything. The pension issue was beaten to death LONG before you ever came into the picture.

[CA renter]

Huge bummer! This is one of our family’s favorite restaurants. The one near us is almost always busy. I hope they’re able to recovery quickly after this.

[CA renter]

As with all animals, they become more fierce and competitive when there is perceived scarcity, or when they feel threatened in some way. The hummingbird analogy works. 🙂

BTW, for those who are looking for plants that attract hummingbirds, this plant really works wonders. They absolutely love it. It’s a gorgeous plant, and seems to do well in our climate.

http://www.gardensonline.com.au/GardenShed/PlantFinder/Show_2796.aspx

[CA renter]

Have the government own the natural resources and use the revenues from oil sales to improve the infrastructure and living conditions of the 5 million people. Obviously, the government would have to already have the capital available to fund the development of automated system.

If the government didn’t have the money to fund the automated system, then lease the rights to the oil to the rich guy and include a revenue sharing agreement where the government gets at least 70% (pulling that percentage out of the air for now) of the net profits.

[CA renter]

[quote=flu]In today’s world take Uber for example. Do you still need to bend over and pay an arm and a leg for regular yellow cab? What do you think Uber has done to the traditional cab business model? And now let’s suppose Lyft or Uber is interested creating a autonomous ride sharing service that requires no driver. Then what? What do you think naturally happens to the the folks that were cab drivers. Lyft and Uber might need to hire more R&D engineers to build this.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/uber-s-first-self-driving-fleet-arrives-in-pittsburgh-this-month-is06r7on

Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month
The autonomous cars, launching this summer, are custom Volvo XC90s, supervised by humans in the driver’s seat.

Near the end of 2014, Uber co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick flew to Pittsburgh on a mission: to hire dozens of the world’s experts in autonomous vehicles. The city is home to Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics department, which has produced many of the biggest names in the newly hot field. Sebastian Thrun, the creator of Google’s self-driving car project, spent seven years researching autonomous robots at CMU, and the project’s former director, Chris Urmson, was a CMU grad student.

“Travis had an idea that he wanted to do self-driving,” says John Bares, who had run CMU’s National Robotics Engineering Center for 13 years before founding Carnegie Robotics, a Pittsburgh-based company that makes components for self-driving industrial robots used in mining, farming, and the military. “I turned him down three times. But the case was pretty compelling.” Bares joined Uber in January 2015 and by early 2016 had recruited hundreds of engineers, robotics experts, and even a few car mechanics to join the venture. The goal: to replace Uber’s more than 1 million human drivers with robot drivers—as quickly as possible.

The plan seemed audacious, even reckless. And according to most analysts, true self-driving cars are years or decades away. Kalanick begs to differ. “We are going commercial,” he says in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “This can’t just be about science.”
[/quote]

Thank you for posting these articles, flu. Most people would agree that technology is displacing human workers, that’s not debatable. The problem is that the people who were already displaced by technology (over decades) have traditionally been the low-to-middle class working Americans. They’ve already been displaced and are fighting for whatever scraps are left behind. In their world, there has long been a huge oversupply of labor, and the introduction of greater numbers of cheap, exploitable foreign labor has made things even worse for these people.

Your article also defines part of the problem: they are hiring “dozens” or “hundreds” of these higher-end tech workers “…to replace Uber’s more than 1 million human drivers with robot drivers…”

It’s clear that the number of new jobs created by the shift to higher-level tech jobs is minuscule compared to the jobs being lost.

What do we do with all of the people who are being displaced by technology? And why should we add to this burden by adding even more workers to an already over-saturated labor market?

This is the primary reason for the discontent among current and former working-class Americans (of multiple races and ethnicities). What some see as “racism” is really a fight for survival. These people have been steadily and dramatically losing their economic, political, and social power, and it’s been happening for decades (the suicide rate for this group is near a 30 year high). It’s perfectly understandable that they would support the first politician who claims to be standing up for the American working class (Trump on the right, and Bernie on the left). Nobody’s done that in decades. To the contrary, it seems as though our political leaders have long thrown these workers under the bus in order to court foreign workers and a more globalist agenda.

[Note: this is an excellent article which helps to explain what’s been happening. Please read it. -CAR]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434544/white-working-class-mortality-rates-are-increasing

And while we keep hearing the drumbeat about needing more education, especially in STEM subjects, there is no shortage of college graduates, and no shortage of people with STEM degrees. The job openings where there is a high demand for workers tend to be in very concentrated areas, and there is no way that these few openings can even begin to make a dent in our under/unemployment rate, even if every person out there were to get a specialized degree in the required subject(s).

http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/180053-computing-is-the-safe-stem-career-choice-today/fulltext

[CA renter]

[quote=flu-redux][quote=zk][quote=FlyerInHi]When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 19:34[/quote]

Hilarious, Brian. As if religious people are going to look at a sacred text and suddenly agree with something they’d previously disagreed with. As if they actually follow the word of their god without twisting it around to meet their own desires. Please.[/quote]

I find the irony between those that support Trump and those claiming to be Christian.[/quote]

That’s because you’re looking at it from a superficial, one-dimensional perspective. If you consider all of the variables involved, you’ll see that, in general, these people are more worried about their economic, political, and social survival than their religion.

Brian’s quote also highlights the fact that the “immigrant issue” has been a problem throughout human history. Humans are tribal animals, and as such, it is perfectly natural for them to cling to what is most familiar to them, especially when resources are scarce and people feel threatened and insecure.

[CA renter]

[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
We need to stay the hell out of other people’s countries
[/quote]

[quote=CA renter]
We owe these refugees safe zones in their own countries, and we have the obligation to pay whatever it takes to have a sufficient enough military presence to protect them within these zones. [/quote]

How do you reconcile these two ideas?[/quote]

Easy. One is the result of the other (and context matters…if you had read my posts in their entirety, the answer would be obvious).

I am totally opposed to invading other countries in an attempt to forcibly “open markets,” or extract resources, or overturn fairly popular and effective leaders, etc. This is almost always what we are doing when we go into other countries. Sure, our leaders try to provide cover by constructing some story about how we are “liberating” some particular group or getting rid of “dictators,” etc.; but the truth is that we are almost always in other countries because our military exists to serve and protect corporate interests.

But the refugees that I was referring to above **already exist** because of our meddling and disastrous actions. As a result, we owe it to them to try to repair what we have damaged as best as possible. And we owe the innocent civilians protection for as long as necessary. While we are doing this, we should take absolutely no action to establish a “Western-friendly” government, or to benefit any Western corporations or interests of any kind. All of our actions should be decided by the will of the local people; and nothing we do should be for our own benefit or the benefit of any of our “allies.”

Ultimately, the goal is to avoid creating refugees to begin with. That’s why I support a fairly isolationist military agenda (and fair, not “free,” trade).

[CA renter]

More:

“Low-wage Americans are not the only workers affected by stagnant wages and rising inequality. The middle class has also experienced stagnating hourly wages over the last generation, and even those with college degrees have seen no pay growth over the last 10 years. Since the late 1970s, wages for the bottom 70 percent of earners have been essentially stagnant, and between 2009 and 2013, real wages fell for the entire bottom 90 percent of the wage distribution. Even wages for the bottom 70 percent of four-year college graduates have been flat since 2000, and wages in most STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) occupations have grown anemically over the past decade.

This dismal wage growth is the result of intentional policy choices made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth, and political power. As explained below, these choices fall into five broad categories: the abandonment of full employment as a main objective of economic policymaking, declining union density, various labor market policies and business practices, policies that have allowed CEOs and finance executives to capture ever larger shares of economic growth, and globalization policies. Collectively, these policy decisions have shifted economic power away from low- and middle-wage workers and toward corporate owners and managers.”

Causes of Wage Stagnation

[CA renter]

Here’s some more for you. Even the factors that don’t immediately seem to be tied to “globalization” are actually a result of the ability of employers to exploit those who either do not know their rights, or are too afraid to stand up for them.

“Other factors behind stagnating American wages

This paper provides a brief overview of some of the causes of wage stagnation and inequality. Sources in the references section provide a more complete analysis. Excessive unemployment, not only during and after the Great Recession but over most years since 1979, has suppressed wage growth, adversely affecting low-wage workers more than middle-wage workers but having little impact on high-wage workers. Global integration with low-wage countries, accelerated by particular trade policies (e.g., admission of China to the World Trade Organization in the late 1990s) has adversely affected wages of non–college educated workers. The erosion of labor standards (beyond the decline in the real value of the minimum wage) and weak enforcement have also put downward pressure on wages. Extensive wage theft, worker misclassification, weakened prevailing wage laws and overtime protections, and the failure to modernize our labor standards to provide sick leave, family leave, or minimum vacation schedules all hurt wage growth. The increased presence of undocumented workers who are vulnerable to employer exploitation also undercuts not only the wages of these workers but also those in similar fields.”

Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts

[CA renter]

I’ll give you yet another head start, Pri. Let’s see if you can use this as a springboard to do more research on your own.

See if you can notice a pattern here. It might be a bit difficult at first, but if you think really hard, you might get it. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more professions that have been outsourced to cheap, exploitable foreign labor — whether the jobs are shipped to countries with desperate workers, or the desperate workers are shipped to these jobs locally, the result is the same, it’s just two sides of the same coin. U.S. workers are being displaced by lower-wage, desperate, exploitable foreign workers.

———–

“Of the largest occupations in the lowest-wage quintile, the two occupations with the greatest wage declines between 2009 and 2014 were both in the restaurant sector. As Table 1 shows, cooks and food preparation workers experienced wage declines of 8.9 percent and 7.7 percent, respectively. Wage declines were also especially pronounced for janitors and cleaners, personal care aides, home health aides, and maids and housekeeping cleaners.”

http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/Occupational-Wage-Declines-Since-the-Great-Recession.pdf

[CA renter]

[quote=FlyerInHi]BG and CArenter, does anything you say justify the shameful demonstrations against refugees, children and adults?[/quote]

The difference between you and me is that you prefer to focus on the symptoms, whereas I prefer to focus on the causes of these problems.

None of the behaviors and beliefs that you are focused on exist in a vacuum. Our elected officials and the corporate/financial interests who control them (and Hillary’s hands are covered in blood) have caused the conditions for these refugees to exist in the first place.

I was opposed to the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc., and have protested and spoken out against them from the earliest days. How about you?

These refugees shouldn’t exist, and Hillary Clinton is an extension of the policies that caused these atrocities in the fist place. Are you voting for her this election? I’m not (no, I’m not voting for Trump, either).

We need to stay the hell out of other people’s countries and we need to stop thinking that we have a right to their resources (yes, I believe that the people who were born and raised in a region, and who have ancestral ties to a region, have rights that people from other countries don’t have). We do not own the oil under their land, and we do not own the right to mine minerals or other natural resources from land (or water) belonging to others who already live there. We also don’t have the right to exploit their people for their labor just because they are desperate.

We owe these refugees safe zones in their own countries, and we have the obligation to pay whatever it takes to have a sufficient enough military presence to protect them within these zones. They have the right to live in their own countries; that’s what they prefer, and that’s what we owe them, no matter the expense. The people who got us into these wars (and the idiotic voters who voted for the corporate-controlled puppets who caused these wars) need to pay for what they have done.

It’s easy to cost-shift the burden to those who are most vulnerable and least able to bear these costs — being displaced from their occupations or neighborhoods, being pushed down the political/social totem pole, etc. Again, it’s easy to bathe in self-righteousness when you’re not the one paying the price. It’s time for those who make these decisions, and who most benefit from them, to make the greatest sacrifices.

[CA renter]

[quote=harvey][quote=CA renter]What flu posted has nothing at all to do with the issue being discussed.[/quote]

Of course not. It was just an article about immigrant labor that countered your baseless claim about immigrant labor. The claim you made without any citations while comically attacking me for not doing any research.

[quote]As already noted by other posters, farm workers are not paid nearly enough as it is,[/quote]

The topic of this thread is immigration and refugees, not fair labor wages. The OP story is about immigrant children specifically.

If you have reason to believe someone is not being paid a legal wage, contact the authorities. I’m sure some government employee will get right on it.

[quote]American workers are not willing to do that […][/quote]

Which means they aren’t being displaced.

[quote][…]we should not be striving to plumb the deepest depths of what workers are willing to accept.[/quote]

Whatever in hell that means.

[quote]And I wasn’t referring to BG’s comment as research.[/quote]

Oh, you were just thanking her for insulting me?

[quote]All you have to do is look at the demographic shifts in some key industries [I’ll give you a head start: construction, manufacturing, warehousing, trucking, food service (esp. cooks and fast-food workers), hospitality, child care, auto repair, etc.), check out the demographic changes, and then compare that to the jobs where pay hasn’t kept up with inflation.[/quote]

I looked at them and didn’t see anything that would suggest we should not have compassionate policies toward immigrants and refugees, particularly children.

What did you conclude from your extensive research?

[quote]Here’s a fairly recent story about Disney dumping their local talent in favor of immigrants.
[/quote]

People sue for just about anything these days. An unsettled lawsuit is your best example?

The job market is doing well. The Fed is reporting we are near full employment. Your job-stealing immigrant boogeyman doesn’t exist.

As usual, the progression of your arguments is like a dog chasing its tail: cute for a moment or two, but then quickly becomes annoying and sad.[/quote]

As usual, your lack of reading comprehension skills rears its ugly head. This thread, like many others, has changed from the original topic. We are now on the topic of American workers being displaced. This was based on flu’s more recent link to an article about the “less educated” being most opposed to these demographic and cultural shifts.

You still haven’t done any research, Pri, and your statements make that painfully obvious. Try again.

[CA renter]

[quote=harvey][quote=CA renter]Thank you, BG. It seems that Pri is completely unable to do any research of his own, while expecting others to spoon-feed him every single fact and detail[/quote]

Someone on the internet says they know some people that told them something, and you call that “research?”

No doubt you’ve cited BG posts in all your academic publications – give that girl a PhD!

But let’s get past the personal comments about me, or your gossip about what you want others to think of me. If you’re really on a higher plane then let’s see you set an example:

Tell us again about a demographic been displaced (besides BGs pals, lol.): Not someone making an excuse because they halfheartedly looked for a job and failed…an actual, documented population of people that have been displaced by immigrants in the US.

Still waiting for an actual answer, and the Piggs see clearly when you weasel out with an insult or “do some research” cop out.

While we are at it … What’s your general position on refugee immigrants? Can you make a direct statement, without innuendo, or speculation about what someone else might think in some hypothetical situation?

Can you elevate the conversation about the middle-school level, and say something with substance?

EDIT: I see that flu just posted some credible research. Should his wife also go dictionary shopping?[/quote]

What flu posted has nothing at all to do with the issue being discussed. As already noted by other posters, farm workers are not paid nearly enough as it is, and these immigrant workers (especially the undocumented ones) are willing to live in cramped, decrepit, filthy shacks; or camp out in river valleys and hillsides. They have been working these miserable, back-breaking jobs without overtime, and are often abused and disrespected by their employers. American workers are not willing to do that, and we should not be striving to plumb the deepest depths of what workers are willing to accept.

And I wasn’t referring to BG’s comment as research. All you have to do is look at the demographic shifts in some key industries [I’ll give you a head start: construction, manufacturing, warehousing, trucking, food service (esp. cooks and fast-food workers), hospitality, child care, auto repair, etc.), check out the demographic changes, and then compare that to the jobs where pay hasn’t kept up with inflation.

Here’s a fairly recent story about Disney dumping their local talent in favor of immigrants.

Now, try doing some of your own research. I’ve just given you a head start since you’re clueless about how to do this on your own.

[CA renter]

[quote=no_such_reality][quote=flu-redux]

My argument isn’t against paying farm workers more. My argument is about people making the claim the immigrants and migrants are stealing “their jobs”. Looks to me that those jobs are not good enough for people, because they don’t appear to be filled by the people that complain.

Just like all the whiners that complain about H1B without having the education or experience in ever writing a usable like a code.

People just complain way too much. That’s why the often let opportunity slip right by them, and someone else ends up seizing those opportunities. I hardly feel sorry for anyone who does.[/quote]

Again, hard physical work in semi-remote (way-rural) locations exposed to the elements for $12/hr or Starbucks in AC in local area for $15/hr.

Besides, I really doubt, you or I could even get hired to work a field if we wanted.

The farm business has been complaining and claiming people don’t want those jobs, yet they still, since McCain sat their shooting his mouth off about it in 2008, haven’t increased wages.

If business was a person buying a house in San Diego, they’d be complaining about no good homes while still trying to pay $150K for a 3 bedroom SFR ranch on the coast.

Why is that? Because we’ve allowed a continual stream of abused labor to be exploited. So the wages are still $12/hr.[/quote]

+1,000,000

I’d be happy to pay more for our food in order to provide a better life for the people who are doing the damn hard work of laboring in the fields.

[CA renter]

[quote=deadzone]Strawberry farms are just an example BG. The point is, if the industry can’t survive locally without needing to import foreign workers, then the business is not viable and should not exist.

Makes more sense to import the product rather than import thousands of workers, being subsidized by taxpayers, just for the benefit of a few wealthy land-owners.[/quote]

Agree with this. Unfortunately, NAFTA displaced (there’s that word again!) many Mexican farmers because our subsidized crops were sold into Mexico, putting Mexican farmers, who did not get subsidies, out of business.

That’s one of reasons so many Mexican farm workers are coming to the U.S.

[Author]

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