Yellow jacket freedom fighters spreading to London

Moe_The_Bartender

antrobus wrote: »

Besides, wouldn't it be simpler if they all just voted for a government that they wanted?

When do people ever get the opportunity? The French and Americans voted for the candidate that they disliked the least rather than one that they actually wanted.

You could make the same argument in most so called democracies. When I'm next considering where to place my cross, I'd be hard pressed to find a candidate I could actually support.

Enterprise_1701C

AG47 wrote: »

The freedom fighters are planning on doing a bank run every month until the banks collapse.

It's simple get as many people as possible around the world to withdraw everything from the system, and hold it in hard cash

Sounds like a burglar's/mugger's paradise to me!

kabayiri

Herzlos wrote: »

An interesting point I'd seen raised earlier is that if automation is good enough it becomes self defeating.
Take a robotic workforce, with the ability to maintain/repair/replicate/supervise itself, able to eliminate the jobs of 90% of the population. Now with 90% of the population unemployed, even with a generous state benefit system (funded somehow), who's going to buy all of the stuff produced by the robots? No-one but the super rich have any available money. Without a good state benefit system (Universal Income) or some money-less society, the few working won't be able to fund everyone else, and everyone else won't be able to afford anything. You'll have a small section of society living the high life* with robot servants, whilst the bulk of the population is relegated to the dark ages.

...

It would only be self-defeating if it was a closed system.

It's not.

It's a race, as are many things which push humans on.

In the past, it was a race between nations as to things like maritime power, or industrialization.

China takes 50% of global robot production, despite having vast numbers of workers...far more than we could imagine.

Why? Because they know that they can gain from being #1, possibly at the expense of other nations.

Herzlos

kabayiri wrote: »

It would only be self-defeating if it was a closed system.

It is absolutely a closed system until we manage to colonise other planets.


China is buying a lot of robot production to help their factory productivity, but we're still a long way from humans being replaceable for a lot of jobs, at which point the system fails.

kabayiri

Herzlos wrote: »

It is absolutely a closed system until we manage to colonise other planets.

...

No. This thread specifically mentions 'London' and is UK-centric as a result.

Arklight

MobileSaver wrote: »

Agreed but, even taking the extreme case druggies out of the equation, are the general work-shy parents the sort of people we want to be incentivising to have children? On balance are their children likely to be a drain or a benefit to society as a whole? Answers on a postcard...



In that case, my apologies, I thought that was exactly what you were defending.



You've completely missed the point; I'm not suggesting the State should physically stop people having children. I'm suggesting the opposite; people should take responsibility for their own actions and not have children if they can't afford to rather than expecting the State to step in and bail them out because they have a "human right to have children." Is this really that controversial a concept?!?!

I don't think the incidences of people having children to claim benefits is anything like as prevalent as you believe. It does apply to some low income parents, frequently (but not always) the ones who end up having their kids take into care anyway, but not the majority.

The majority (63%) of children defined as being poor, have one or both parents in full time work. The parents I have encountered in this situation will usually give up everything, including their own meals (malnutrition is once again becoming a problem in Britain's poor) to make sure their kids don't go without.

Herzlos

I'd agree with that. Whilst some people likely do have kids to get more money, it's an almost non-existent bogeyman used to justify cutting benefits for poor parents.

kabayiri wrote: »

No. This thread specifically mentions 'London' and is UK-centric as a result.

Yeah, the yellow jackets are in London being a nuisance to Greggs. The Robotic uprising will affect the whole planet. Anything that causes most of London to be unemployed is going to do the same for everywhere else.

Arklight

I think there is a damaging and usually untrue stigmatisation of people who don't have much money, like they are all Wayne and Waynetta Slob blowing £50 notes on fags and and booze, and blocking doorways with babies prams.

You really don't get much money from the government to look after a child anymore. Much of the headline figure that people get annoyed about is made up of housing benefit, which by definition enriches private landlords, not the low income tenants who receive it.

Benefits are now restricted for people with more than 2 children:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/03/two-child-limit-on-benefits-are-you-going-to-be-affected

I would urge people to reflect on whether it's really very fair or sensible to point at some of lowest income, most trapped people in the UK, and accuse them of taking too much.

Malthusian

AG47 wrote: »

The freedom fighters are planning on doing a bank run every month until the banks collapse.

You mean they're going to repay their overdrafts and credit cards?

Arklight wrote:

The majority (63%) of children defined as being poor, have one or both parents in full time work.

So 37% of children currently within those dancing goalposts have no parent in work. That's an incredibly high percentage compared to the general population in a time of full employment.

Herzlos

Malthusian wrote: »

So 37% of children currently within those dancing goalposts have no parent in work. That's an incredibly high percentage compared to the general population in a time of full employment.

I'd have thought it's a pretty low percentage actually. It's easy to understand that families with no working adults are almost certainly going to be poor since the benefits are crap (there will be a few non-working families with either passive income or huge cash reserves, but not many).



That 2/3rds of families with poor children have adults in work is pretty horrifying - but then it's hard to quantify 'in work' since the current definition is 'has worked 1 hour in the last 2 weeks'.