I think the joke is still good, because it's still a bad manner to have your phone ringing and buzzing in many situations (a concert, at the opera etc). I mean, it's actually an impressive comic, it imagines a possible future tech and correctly identifies some real misuses, 70-80 years before it became reality.
When cell phones were in their infancy, I remember reading an article, some kind of op-ed, about how they were ruining society.
His primary example, his primary complaint, was a situation where he was at dinner with his wife and his own cell phone rang. A friend was calling him! On his phone, at dinner!
How incredibly, unimaginably rude could someone be? To call someone while he was in a public restaurant, at dinner with his wife! Can you imagine the audacity?
I remember thinking what a complete asshole this man must be. A friend called him while he was at a restaurant, the ringer went, it embarrassed him at this nice restaurant, and he went on a tear blaming everyone but himself.
Meanwhile, we now have people who get on the bus blaring music from their cell phones or hanging a portable bluetooth speaker from their backpacks while walking down the street, and people miss the idea that hey, the problem isn't the technology, it's that the technology enables inconsiderate, rude people to be inconsiderate and rude in new and exciting ways, as though boom boxes didn't exist before bluetooth speakers.
Meanwhile I -still- think anyone who pulls out a cell phone when spending time with other humans is an asshole. Leave it at home or turn it off. You can doom scroll later.
I think that's going a bit far. Having your phone with you and turned on is OK because there sometimes are emergencies that have higher priority than whatever you are doing. Sure, take steps to avoid constant unneeded interruptions but looking at the phone once in a while to see check if a notification is important is not going to kill anyone. You don't own someones attention 100% when you are spending time with them.
And someone doom scrolling while "spending time" with others might not actually want to be spending time with those people. In that case the ire should be directed to those people or obligations making them spend their limited time in a way they dislike.
If someone really deals with life or death emergencies they would likely benefit from a device made for that with multi-week battery life and very broad range, like a pager. Doctors and firefighters still use those for a reason.
Short of that, it is probably not an actual emergency and real human people in front of you should have your full respect and attention with a rare exception being when you are trapped, like on an airplane. If you are not trapped then just leave. Using a phone in front of someone for any reason not relevant to the current activity or conversation is just a passive aggressive insult.
Phones are like toilets. No one wants to watch you use one.
Unless you are somewhere remote a charge time > 16 hours might as well be infinite as you can charge it while you sleep. And I'm not just thinking about people being on call where a dedicated device makes sense but just your normal people emergencies that might happen to someone you care about that require immediate action on your part. Sure, those are exceptional but so are many other things you might prepare for. And I'm not saying that you are not allowed to disconnect if that's what you want, but chastising others for having a phone with them and turned on is, well, inconsiderate.
I also disagree that you owe anyone your attention. There are so many more situations where you are stuck being around people that are not you being literally trapped. This is even more true for kids who might not have full autonomy of where they spend their time.
But even when someone wants to spend time with you that doesn't mean that they owe you their attention. Certainly not their full attention for the entire time. Let people daydream a bit and let them check their phone once in a while. Remember that not everyone is the same as you. If get that offended by that then perhaps you're the problem.
> Using a phone in front of someone for any reason not relevant to the current activity or conversation is just a passive aggressive insult.
And sometimes a passive agressive insult is called for.
Also, I am pretty sure there are people who do want to watch you use a toilet.
If I agreed to spend time with someone I absolutely owe them my attention and respect. To pull out a phone in front of them is to disconnect from being present with them. Everyone says they are still listening when a phone or a laptop is in front of them and they are liars. Some notification will pop up and suck them away and it is 5 minutes before the trance snaps. Rather than passively aggressively insult someone I should just admit to myself I am out of social energy for this situation and leave to be alone.
I have had to resort to offering to buy dinner if people turn their phones off because they are so addicted to being constantly connected to every chat, meme, tiktok dance, and facebook political rant.
All the time I see entire friend groups or families sitting around tables at restaurants all on their phones ignoring each other. It is gross.
I am fine always being the person at the table pushing for the exact opposite of that, and maybe we can all tolerate the middle ground.
I was just in an awkward social situation the other day where someone left their phone on a table at a party and walked away to do something. Some guy was telling an interesting story and we were all trying to politely listen, but suddenly that phone started ringing at full volume. Everyone just kind of ignored it at first but it kept ringing. I was annoyed and wanted to reach over and mute/end the call, but, you don’t touch other people’s phones in polite society. Eventually it stopped ringing. Amazingly, everyone just acted like it wasn’t there. I guess we’ve all become accustomed to such things.
In my circles, you would mute the disruptive call with the side button and tell them, “sorry, your phone was ringing while you were gone and I muted it.” Or just “your phone rang while you were gone.”
It is great. I think they got there by extrapolating a home phone
interrupting dinner table conversations, and similar. The urgency of a ringing phone dominating all else. Like a fire alarm alerting that this is the most important conversation to be had!
I see, but is that different from a slightly more quiet ring tone? The point of setting mobile phones to vibrate is that (ideally) you can feel it (because you have it in your pocket) without others arround you being interrupted.
Sure. Many home DECT phones are small enough to pocket or have belt clips. If it is on a desk or nightstand next to you the vibration will be noticed though.
That comic got one small detail incorrect: in 2022, phones are rarely in pockets, because most people can't stop using theirs long enough to put it in a pocket.
If my phone is in my pocket I can't watch billionaires destroy society and the planet in real-time, and then I'll have to catch up on /r/outoftheloop later that week.
To be fair, phones have become a bit too big for pockets. I'm looking forward to carrying handles. (If transistor radios could have them, why not phones?) ;-)
I remember when I was young, my dad came out of a Parent-Teacher meeting and showed his flip phone which showed 40 missed calls from work. He worked as a lead programmer in a bank which was very new to Internet Banking.
He was clearly annoyed with the calls, but as a kid I was amused and a little jealous of the fact that in such a short time so many people wanted to get hold of him. I also remember signing up for all kind of email newsletters just to get more emails!
Have to admire the vision of this artist in an age when even land lines weren't in wide use!
They are now banning cellphones in schools in Nordic countries. But alas, parents are buying standalone smartwatches for their precious brats.
Which reminds me of me in 1950s. I always tried to get seat by the window where the heat pipes run. My crystal set needed ground wire and the antenna could be hidden by the curtains.
Blade Runner was never about predicting the future. It was what could become if technology went in certain ways. Japan did not end up ruling the west either.
Blade Runner isn't about the technology per se. It's about our reactions to the technology. If we create a completely autonomous artificial life, is it "a person"? Does it deserve personhood?
The source book is a little better about the question. The major difference between Replicants and people is that people have empathy and Replicants don't. In the book there's a device that allows people to essentially get into this weird empathy group mind thing. It's been a hot minute since I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" so forgive the details.
And that's what the Voight-Kampf device measures. That's what the questions are designed to test. It's why the first Replicant flips out on the turtle question. He can't process the need to flip over the turtle. He can't empathise with the turtle.
But he's kind of still a child. Which is a little understandable, because Replicants have a 3-year lifespan. They are babies. Toddlers. He flips out because he's throwing a tantrum. Roy Batty and Pris are closer to the end of their life, they've developed empathy, as any person would. That's what gets Deckard. He realizes Replicants are fully people and what we do to them is wrong. Batty was never the bad guy.
But that's all tangential. Blade Runner is set 37 years in the future. Which is now 3 years in the past. It was trying to guess when the relevant technology will be available. I think that's a better way of thinking about it. Science Fiction isn't trying to predict what will be available in X years, it's trying to predict in how many years X will be available.
Definitely this. Bladerunner is all about being a future Noir set in Los Angeles where it is perpetually night and often raining. Surely they knew when filming it or it being written that LA is extremely sunny and never rains.
Picking nits while skipping how we don't have off-world colonies or replicants?
In that case, the comic got things wrong too.
You'll be hard pressed to find people wearing those clothes these days, especially the nurse's headgear. Canes and briefcases are also rare, though I suspect that those rare few wearing a bowler hat might still use them.
My understanding is in the blade runner universe the off world colonies aren't somewhere you'd want to live & the replicants are banned on earth. In other words, two things to be avoided.
So we could easily advance past those points without touching them entirely.
I have always used a bell ringtone, I like it because I find it less-invasive then all the other abstract modern ringtones that only give me alarm clock PTSS.
Unfortunately, Samsung removed the classing bell ringtone in their latest models :(
Star Wars did a horrible job at documenting the past, too! They invented laser beams and all the hokey religious dudes thought energy swords were better?
It's like how hacking or computer UIs are depicted in 80s/90s movies. When the general public doesn't have a good understanding of a technology or the technology doesn't have a good foothold in peoples' lives, you can make these crazy fantastical representations of what (the future of) these technologies might be.
I'm sure some people had the imagination when they first saw radios and how they were removing wires from some devices to think about what this meant for any device with wires.
> Now, increasingly, cellphones are *day-to-day life*. Far from the literal “pocket telephones” envisioned a century ago, they’ve worked their way into nearly every aspect of human existence, including those Haselden could never have considered.
It is now essential to be considered part of the society, to the point that someone who does not want to or cannot carry a cell phone is sneered at. Anecdotally, I was in the USA and during a few day lay-over, I wanted to get a hair cut. I was refused service at a hair cutting chain because I did not have a cell phone with me (it was in the hotel, did not want spam, would not get there and back on time, etc.). I offered credit card or cash, but was rejected, and explicitly told I have to have cell phone.
I am not angry, just sad.
As @nonrandomstring noted, "absurdity of reality is escaping parody".
I've wondered, as wealth inequality grows, perhaps the poorest among us simple won't have enough money to exchange for goods. "Sorry, you don't have enough money to make a haircut worth my time, but if you let me invade your privacy and show you ads until the end of time, that will be valuable enough to exchange for a haircut. Read and sign this 200 page contract and I'll go get a chair ready."
See also essential software that cannot be purchased, only rented. Many of the most essential apps today are not paid for with money, occasionally people talk about how they want to pay for these apps (in exchange for better customer service, etc), but no, they don't want our money, our money is worth less than the data we give.
But the practical necessity of having a smartphone and some internet access has only resulted in cheaper devices and services that fit the needs of the poor. It was a pretty big thing during Covid lockdowns in rural parts of India for instance, where extremely cheap smartphones and internet access made it possible for some amount of remote education to be pursued entirely remotely.
Google calendar invites contain attachments in standard formats you can use in Thunderbird or almost anything else.
Facebook events can do the same, but it does require you to have a Facebook account which is over the ethical line for me as I do not accept their terms of service. I always let community event organizers know this, and explain how to export events into a standard calendar format that can be emailed.
Someone at Google has said "people want to pay us money to have better support and be treated like customers instead of products", and the response was "no, not worth it". On a macro scale Google was not interested in the money of individuals.
Facebook / Meta is one of the richest companies in the world, and they didn't make their money by taking money from individuals.
Politicians aren't swayed by the donations of common people, but by the donation of wealthy special interest groups and wealthy individuals.
The poorest 50% of the United States controls 1.2% of the wealth. One day they'll look around and collectively ask "what can we do with our money?", and the answer will be "buy cheap consumer goods, pay rent, and not much else". More and more companies don't want the little money they have, instead they want their attention, their votes, and their time and labor. Going after their money alone just isn't worth it.
Oh. Another great example of this is how many companies focus more attention on getting VC money than on getting paying customers. Again, average people don't have enough wealth for it to be a focus for the biggest companies.
I haven't encountered that yet, but I'm starting to encounter mobile apps as required proof of membership for things. My family got a membership to a children's museum a few weeks ago, and the expectation is that my wife and I have their app on our phones to get inside. For our second visit, I brought our printed receipt, but my wife had to stand there downloading and installing their app so that we could use our guest passes. The person at the front desk didn't seem to have any other way to do it. Similarly, my neighborhood's community pool and fitness center requires the Brivo Mobile Pass app to get through the front door (and it's unattended, so there's nobody who can just look you up in the system and let you in).
I think the worst part of this is businesses that do this all have different crappy apps. My gym has their own app that must be scanned upon entry. But their app is often slow and unresponsive, and unpredictably logs out. Often at the entry, a person will be stuck trying to reload the app, possibly hindered by their phone having switched to the gym's questionable wifi. Multiple other people will be stuck behind them, having preemptively loaded the app and QR code while walking to the door.
This replaced keychain fobs with a barcode, which had none of these annoyances.
On Android you should be able to create new user accounts on the phone which are completely separated and can be quickly switched between. I used to create one with just WhatsApp installed for instance.
Alternatively if you are rooted Xprivacy[0] does what you asked, allowing you to grant apps permissions but then feeding them fake data as configured.
No idea about iOS though.
EDIT: There seems to be an app called Insular[1] which also works like Xprivacy, but doesn't require root at all and comes with a couple of extra features like the ability to have multiple instances of an app installed. Haven't tried this one though and I have no idea if it even runs on newer versions of Android.
As someone that does not own a phone I have had to explain I cannot install apps many times. Normally when I bring up the word discrimination, they always find a backup path they do not advertise.
I do not own a cell phone and have attended many Ticketmaster events in recent years. If you explain you do not have a compatible device, and sometimes use the word discrimination, they will take a credit card by phone and have paper tickets waiting for you at the box office. It annoys them, but not my problem. Prepaid credit cards are recommended for privacy.
I have not installed the TM app - you can add a ticket to Apple Wallet from the website, and every order I've seen has "don't have a phone? go to the box office for tickets when you arrive" somewhere
They're not allowing that in general any longer. I wasn't allowed to log in to their site this summer without phone text verification.
However, I believe they still have a ticket printer for emergencies, such as when you show up at the window saying you broke your phone, but just happened to print a receipt before leaving.
Up until recently I had a flip phone and often left it at home. Nobody ever sneered at me for a lack of a phone. I've never been anywhere that required one. Why are people allowing anything like you describe to exist?
Joined a gym and they me to install an app and did a walkthrough. They way they asked was as if they were just asking me to pose for a photo, as if it was barely a request. I wonder what theyd say if I refused or said I had no phone.
Also during covid scares the inconvenience of not having SMS and QR would have been insane.
I always say I have no phone, because I do not. They always have some alternative path so as not to end up with edge case discrimination lawsuits, though it is often only known to managers.
I run a b2b tech company and do not own a cell phone. It started as a month long detox and I found I was happier and never went back. All the 90s ways of doing things still work fine.
I wouldn't be shocked. QR code to payment website instead of on-site card processing hardware. A new small shop may be trying to run things super minimally.
I'm skeptical of the "chain" aspect - a chain is more likely to have hardware and support other methods - but a visitor may not know what is/isn't a chain anyway.
OR a particular employ is new or lazy and just didn't want to drag out the hardware. ;)
I actually had a similar problem trying to park in a parking garage. I talked to some people working there (they were moving 'event day price' signs around). I asked if there was a kiosk or any other way to pay (other than by phone). They said there was not and said I just had to leave and find street parking.
This happened when I was trying to park near a place to get my phone fixed!
Over the past year all of the paid parking lots in my city have removed their kiosks and replaced them with QR codes that open a website with a very unwieldy form. Very annoying if your phone happens to be dead or broken or you run out of data or something!
Just needs one more panel where the guy answers the phone only to hear a recording in Chinese telling them that their student loans or car insurance need vital attention.
This comic really reminds me of the pilot episode of the cartoon "A Kitty Bobo". It's the same sort of premise where the main character gets a cell phone before his friends do and he ends up falling into awkward situations even though he thinks it's very cool he has a cell phone now.
Reminds me of one of the pilot episodes of my own life as well :p When I was in elementary school, my father gave me a cell phone so me and him could call each other.
No one else in my class nor in most other classes at school had a phone. So it was kind of cool. But still for many years the only thing I could do with the phone, since no one else had mobile phones yet, was to talk with my father XD It was a blue and black Siemens phone with an antenna. No games, no GPRS/WAP, no nothing other than phone call and SMS ability mainly.
> when the novelty and prestige of cellphones (to say nothing of their gratingly simple ringtones)
I don't think I'm just projecting when I say we've pretty much reverted to that? As far as I can tell it's not 'cool' among schoolchildren any more either to have some song or joke sound or whatever.
The vast majority I hear (i.e. if it rings at all, not just vibrating!) I would say are 'simple'; it's the 'songs and joke sounds or whatever' that grate.
When we all have telephones embedded into our brains, linked in to our neural circuitry. When Google advertises to you in your dreams, daydreams and nightmares. When Huawei gives their government control over their citizens' thoughts, and feelings and desires. When Samsung kills millions with a botched over-the-air firmware upgrade.
If you can gain networked control of such a device, you could easily gain complete control of their motivations and disires. Much more strongly than with any drug.
Not only would you be able to make these people hand over everything of value to you (bypassing any needs to advertise), you could even make them WANT to work for you (and even go to war for you) with fanatical motivation and effort.
As for the dystopian applications, I would not be suprised if there are some dr Mengele wannabies in some dark corners of the world experimenting with how to control prison inmates or similar "disposable" people using such tech.
I wonder what's feasible in the near future. I recall excitedly watching a Gabe Newell interview on BCI. Having struggled with major depression and anxiety, his speculation on using BCI to control sleep/mood/etc seemed like a mental panacea. Of course, with that level of control over one's brain, my delight about potential emotional stabilization feels akin to lionizing computers as a newfangled bookkeeping tool -- while true, it's comically myopic.
Here's a hard turn into wild speculation for ya: The Great Filter is either 1) endosymbiosis or 2) inventing BCI.
Not much beyond the article I linked above. I've been aware of such research for a few decades. It appears that inducing happiness is super easy. But also way more addictive than the hardest drugs. There term Wirehead was a term from SciFi (and later Cyperpunk) to describe someone addicted to such stimulation.
Early use was limited by how to control the mood. Manual control would be impossible, since anyone with access to their own happiness would turn it up to max pretty much at once, with no ability to turn it back down. With it at max setting, people would simply stop functioning, not even able to eat, have sex, etc, so unsupervised it would probably be leathal pretty soon.
So for early application, one would have to set it at some constant offset, which probably had some downsides. (Possibly poor reaction to normal stimuli, I don't remember.)
Later on, maybe about 10 years ago, brain research and computer tech started to allow more sophisticated control of the level, where it would regulate the happiness-level in a way similar to how normal/healthy brains do. (The patiens would be treatment resistent MDS)
Still, the potential downsides are obviously immense, potentially making fentanyl, crack and meth seem like child's play.
A self regulated version as this would be so deadly that I think very few knowing its risks would dare use it. But one _could_ imagine people setting up arrangements where they grant the power to regulate the level, according to some principles.
For instance, let's say you're bored at work, and procastinating by reading HN, at a level that reduces your performance. Let's say that, instead of getting hold of ritalin or microdosing shrooms, you go to a shady lab that installs one of these things, and controls it remotely by lowering happiness just a bit when you're not doing what you "should" and rewards you slightly when coding (by monitoring your laptop), with additional rewards when pull requests are approved.
Now, imagine your manager (or a CPP rep, if you're in China) finding out, and bribes the lab to add some more "features" to your profile, including loyalty to her personally as well as a more aggressive level of rewards for workplace performance.
> When Huawei gives their government control over their citizens' thoughts
So this I guess would be the ultimate authoritarian end game, but from my perspective - what's the point. When you've got total control, what then? Like what's the next move... because anything else is just a rounding error to what you've already got.
I can remember arguments in the airport because people didn't like it when you didn't step away to carry on a conversation in public. Candy Bar phones, anyone? I now use the Samsung Flip and love how small it fits in my pocket, but I still enjoy the large unfolded screen.
I'd bet the majority of phone interactions are Internet based, though- not people wishing to text/talk but notifications from apps telling you about the latest inconsequential thing to promote interaction with them.
remember when we used to playback our voicemails on analogue tape, and check our mail, and interact with strangers, and read the headlines, all maximum once a day..
Lately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job,
because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody. Nothing stays
funny for long, because soon enough it's true, and then banal.
In a world where all things are absurd, ipso facto nothing is absurd.
An interesting question becomes what remains? What are the solid
relations that underpin our humanity?
Having a boss that tells you what to do? No, long since passed the
point where I have to tell my boss what to do - it's called being the
consultant in a clueless, inverted meritocracy.
People wanting to take your money? No. The insane conceit of a
"cash-less society" has already created situations where you cannot
physically force someone to take money from you.
I'm honestly struggling to see what is cast in stone. Even death and
taxes are looking worried. <shakes fist at clouds>
> Lately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job, because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody. Nothing stays funny for long, because soon enough it's true, and then banal.
I've heard them say that as long as I've been alive. I'm sure 3000 years ago traveling bards were saying the same things. There is a lot of comedic value from the statement, so of course any good one will use it from time to time. That doesn't mean it is true.
Frankly there's parts of life where this resonates more today than any time I've been alive.
I've followed US political news since I was a kid. 2016 and onwards shit started getting really weird. Political satire from 2015 was no longer relevant by 2017ish not due the passage of time, but due to the fact that the events that followed are more ridiculous.
I imagine this has happened before. For example, my mom's generation always says 1968 was a crazy year in politics and culture. I imagine early 60s political satire looked tame by the late 60s. But I don't think political satire from 2008 looked ridiculous in 2014, for example.
Germany's highest form of comedy is political cabaret, i.e. someone quotes a politician verbatim and the audience, briefly, imagines they were actually serious. It's the only form of entertainment that keeps getting funnier every year.
I'm not sure if it's related to or orthogonal to everything actually being absurd, but there has been a decades-long trend of America/the West taking longstanding elements of culture less and less seriously, just as a matter of fashion. That removes a lot of the low-hanging fruit for comedians.
Decades ago, acts like Monty Python or Allan Sherman were subversive; now they might still be kind of funny, but certainly not shocking. When you have generations that grew up on self-conscious irony, where the way to be cool was not to be seen caring about anything, it's harder to make comedy stick.
Politicians and religious figures may not be any more or less corrupt and out-of-touch than they always were, but now they can gain enough support to keep their jobs without anyone actually taking them seriously, and that's where the self-parody comes in.
I wouldn't say comedy is failing because the source material is too ridiculous, I would say it's failing because the audience is a tough crowd.
I wish I could remember who said this, because it was a standup saying something ... in an interview. Not performing.
"It's a sad state of affairs when the most accurate political commentary is done by comedians, while the country is being governed by clowns." Such an apt description of the UK. And while that was said two governments (ie. less than a year) ago, it's only slightly less accurate now.
Your comment is like saying "CEOs saying the current market is bad for their industry, while ...still running companies?!"
It's not like the observation that a trade is being hurt (in this case, in the kind of disconnect between your job being pointing out absurdity as something that stands out and making it funny, and a society that seems to drown and revel in it) cannot be done by practitioners of said trade while they practice it...
No, that's the uncharitable, strawman version, that goes for pedanticness over understanding what it means.
It's more like a crooner saying they're being put out of a job after rock n' roll or the Beatlemania, while still having gigs...
Yes, they might still get work and sell some records, but they have a harder time justifying their career, get smaller audiences, and people see them not that culturally or socially relevant anymore...
Standup comedian is a freelance job. It's perfectly possible to be unable to perform and still be a comedian, whether due to lack of material or lack of opportunity.
It's still possible to perform while being less able to get gigs, less able to come up with good jokes, less able to make those jokes relevant, increasingly feeling the jokes are superfluous as everything seems to get at satire-level status by itself, etc - in other words while "not being able to perform" and being slowly put out of a job.
Gentle inquiry: Are you a comedian or work in comedy? Can you state a general region of comedy you're familiar with (USA Comedy? UK Comedy?) without doxing yourself?
[I'm not, and therefore have no opinion on this, but I wanted to know where you're getting your repository of knowledge of "most comedians" from and how to contextualize your knowledge in this matter. I'm asking in good faith.]
Since you ask in good faith (hard to tell around these parts
sometimes);
I'm British, middle aged, and yes I have worked in entertainments
during my career.
So far I have heard (via media interviews or similar) John Cleese,
Mark Thomas, Eddie Izzard, Stewart Lee, Frankie Boyle, Charlie
Brooker, Chris Morris, Steve Coogan, Ian Hislop, and Armando Iannucci
all say approximately the same thing in a more-or-less serious
context.
Of course the "nothing is funny any more" trope is timeless. It
doesn't need saying. However, these comics are also serious cultural
analysts and they're identifying a genuine sea-change.
Thanks for providing me context. If it helps to display the depth of my ignorance about comedy (thus trying to get more context to the claim) I don't know who any of those names are.
Sorry, it's a very parochially British viewpoint. Perhaps where you
are there's also the same undercurrent, just not visible in the
mainstream. You may have to dig a little.
Cultural malaise often hides beneath the surface. One of the most
frightening accounts of this, on a more international stage, is what
Slavoj Zizek had to say on it; He said that in the former Yugoslavia,
humour kept ethnic tensions at bay. The civil war was foreshadowed by
a creeping political correctness and people "not finding things funny
anymore".
I run a podcast that regularly has comics on as guests. These comics are typically on the level of filling theaters across the country. I’m sure the open-mic early-career comics would be happy to play a college
>“I don’t play colleges.” Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it means to throw around certain politically-correct terms. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,'” he said. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about”
I think maybe the teens and college age kids DO understand what they're talking about, and the Seinfeld generation doesn't.
The difference is that many in the Seinfeld generation (and other generations) think of "Racism" or "Sexism" as terrible evils that they must never commit.
While likely the "teens and college-aged kids" he's complaining about recognize that we all engage in some level of racism or sexism in our daily internal or external lives.
So, if someone accused Seinfeld of racism or sexism, his reaction might be to defend himself, and say, "No! How dare you!"
But if someone told one of the "woke kids" they were racist or sexist, their reaction would more likely be, "yeah, probably."
To Jerry, being "a racist" is synonymous with being a bad person. The "woke kids" recognize that we're all racist and sexist and prejudiced to some degree, and (hopefully) trying to be better about it.
Having talked to trans and bi youth, they're cynical, well-read, yet simultaneously naive and emotional, use slurs copiously and ironically, and like any generation, are politically all over the map, including fashy. I would not dare to try and paint these people a certain way.
I would at least like to see real quantifiable evidence that comedy shows on college campuses are less frequent now than they used to be, as opposed to individual comedians who are two generations removed from current college students saying they personally don't feel welcome there any more.
Most of the people on a college campus will not even know who Seinfeld is or identify with his jokes at all - he's probably older than their parents. I'm sure there are plenty of younger comedians killing it on campus
You can always count on the existence of charlatans in every society. People who deceive others to get something by lying have existed since the beginning of recorded history.
There was an issue while I was giving a presentation for a cryptocurrency startup I was a part of and I started telling jokes. Afterward people asked me if I did stand up and I said well I do now.
>Lately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job, because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody
that's not a recent phenomenon. It's a cultural debate that's been going on for decades, probably the most prominent figure is David Foster Wallace, the 'New Sincerity' genre as a response to detached irony and that sort of thing.
That is US federal taxes. Now go grab your check and see how much you are paying in taxes that are not called that. Then remember you also pay taxes when you buy things too. Also remember your must carry insurance (3 of those). Also in some cases just for owning something. Plus state and local. My theory is We did not really lower taxes that much. We just itemized the bill to make it look smaller.
Ok cool guy, please show your work. That should be a very easy to verify theory, you have CPI data, historical IRS tax schedules, state tax schedules, company quarterly statements, etc... Simply saying that taxes are higher than ever feeds into right-wing conspiracy theories and I'm just tired of it.
Yes, it is tiring when someone posts something with absolutely no evidence is taken at face value as truth. But when someone offers evidence to the contrary, it gets argued to death. "What are taxes?" "Insurance is a type of tax." "Sales tax counts now."
None of these people are making the same arguments to the poster who offered nothing but a claim. Because "of course it's true, everyone knows it". Well, everyone is quite capable of being wrong. As those self-same people will happily tell us when it's time to enact some very mild preventative measures for the health and safety of the country that the vast majority of health professionals recommend.
22 + 12 + 3 + 5 + 10 + 7 Those are my percentages of 'tax/insurance'. Which contains must carry insurance and called by the supreme court as a tax as argued by the DoJ. Three of them contain 'hidden' taxes or as your boss's accountant puts it, 'your total compensation'. That is about ~60% of my incoming going towards 'taxes'. That is just for me where I live and my income level. I also am leaving out some others. In some states that number is more along the lines of 70-75% of your total income. We also play games with the Laffer curve so it is harder for anyone to really know what is going on.
My argument is we itemized the bill. All of the individual items look lower. Because we broke them out. The whole number is about the same. I would argue that some are too low for our spend rate but that is a different argument.
In 1952, there were so many carveouts and exemptions that few individuals payed the actual 92%. With fastidious accounting, one's personal tax liability could be zero even if one qualified for the highest income bracket. This was the case until 1970 following Congress's invention and institution of the Alternative Minimum Tax. And while 1981 wasn't the most friendly year for low income taxes, increased globalization meant easier opportunities to set up overseas tax structures for the purpose of reducing one's overall tax burden (what's commonly referred to as tax "avoidance"). To make the claim of highest or lowest tax year for the highest income bracket between 1913 and today is impossible to make without accounting for reductions available in the given year.
It's really tricky to compare marginal rates like that. Has the definition of taxable income changed over time? How many people were actually taxed at those marginal rates? And so on.
I don’t know. It’s pretty difficult to compare when the median citizen’s circumstances have also changed so much.
But in the context of reality’s absurdity reaching escape velocity from parody, it seems fitting that the rich barely pay taxes anymore and are seeking immortality cures like Thiel does. Death and taxes are the postmodern libertarian’s greatest enemies.
That makes it really hard to accept your claim that "Taxes have never been as high as now in recent history."
Now, sure, there are state taxes, and sales taxes, and payroll taxes, and all sorts of other taxes.
Still, where do you get the numbers to back your statement that after 40+ years of Reaganism and unending legislative attempts to lower taxes, that the numbers now are higher than ever before?
In case anyone was curious, United States federal tax receipts were $463 billion in FY1979 and $3.33 trillion in FY2018, a growth of a factor of ~7.2 = ~5.2%/year. The population has grown by a factor of ~1.44 = ~0.95%/year and the effect of inflation has been a factor of ~3.63 = ~3.36%/year, which multiply together to a factor of ~5.2 = ~4.33%/year. The receipts grew faster by a factor of ~1.38 = 0.82%/year.
This calculation does not consider the growth of expenditures specifically (as opposed to receipts) and similarly does not consider the growth of GDP (as opposed to inflation).
Likewise it makes the false assumption that taxes are collected in the same year that income is received. Beginning in the 1980s, many billions of dollars that were subject to tax ended up in IRAs and 401k retirement plans where taxes are deferred for many decades in most cases. Likewise, like kind exchanges of property also defer huge amounts of taxes. So looking at annual tax receipts omits a huge amount of taxed-but-deferred income.
I don't know if taxes are higher now vs some point in history (probably higher than some, lower than others) but your implicit claim that 'taxes' == 'US Federal Income Tax Rate' is so laughable I can't believe you can make it with a straight face. Not everyone is from the US, and the people from the US know that there are like 5 levels of taxation, from local sales tax to property tax to state income tax, state personal property tax, taxes relabeled as 'fees' to circumvent state rules about new tax creation, tariffs, payroll taxes, etc etc etc etc etc. Then there are taxes like social security, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, etc.
Even if all we look at is US federal income taxes, you don't include them all. Social security is a sum of 12.4% of your income (and it is regressive!). Medicare is 2.9%. These have gone up considerably since 1979 (8.1% total in 1979, 15.3% now)
This reminds me of the guy who lost his keys. He was looking by the street light when his friend asked him if he lost his keys by the light. "No, I lost them over by my car, but it's too dark to see anything over there."
Here is a graph from wikipedia that shows that taxes in the US are in total about as high as they have ever been (which was 2000). https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Federal%... You can very clearly see that while Federal taxes are gradually decreasing, that is more than made up by Payroll taxes.
This still directly contradicts the original claim, though. This graphic shows aggregate tax burden was at its highest ever in the late 90s and is currently on a slight downward trend. "About as high" isn't great if you hate taxes, but it isn't what was being disputed.
It's supposed to remind you of Cunningham's Law: "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
As nonameiguess already pointed out, your answer disputes ekianjo's claim, as the peak in your graph was 1999.
As fun as tribal arguing is, I wasn't taking a side. Did you read my post at all? I was saying that the methodology for claiming taxes were lower was so stupid as to defy even any attempt to ascribe good faith.
Let me quote my post for your convenience: "I don't know if taxes are higher now vs some point in history"
I did read your side. You believe I'm not arguing in good faith. I think that's a misinterpretation. I am not versed in the topic, and I don't pretend to be one. But the exchange was claim/counter-claim/counter-counter-claim without any citations, going nowhere.
While presenting wrong, or at least incomplete numbers, shifts it to one about presenting the actual numbers and what they mean, and if it's justified tax increases.
If that's that's bad faith tribalism, than so be it. But you'll notice the pointless exchange about "most taxes EVAR" has stopped.
It's a trope among liberals in the US that taxes are too low, just look at the marginal rates, they used to be 90%! If they used to be 90%, then it's perfectly reasonable to raise them to 35%... I would guess you've heard this quite a few times (even if you don't agree with it, it's a very commonly presented argument), whether you realize it or not, and you are just repeating it. This is largely how political opinions are formed, people pay attention to the side they want to agree with and they internalize the one sided, often easily debunked arguments that side presents over and over and over. It's a form of voluntary brainwashing. As you said, it's not completely obvious what is true here, but if you ask around you'll find that people have very strong opinions about it and are often willing to argue at great length despite having literally zero information for or against.
The tribal point was that I got 2 responses saying 'technically we aren't at the absolute peak tax rate' based on the graph I posted. Instantly people wanted 'taxes aren't at an all time high' to win, and assume this is because their 'tribe' is the one that wants to raise taxes. If you look at the graph we are very nearly at the peak, and certainly from a historical perspective we are plateauing very near the peak. That's not arguing in good faith to chime in that OP was wrong because technically we are a smidgen below the all time high, and OP said 'all time high' rather than 'near the all time high', so they get an L and their side loses and we can just pretend there's no more detail than that.
Years ago a FB friend posted something along the lines "every country where the debt is 100% of GDP ended up with runaway inflation." (It's been a decade; I've forgotten the exact details.)
It was easy to point out that the US had >100% ratio in the 1940s, due to WWII, without the consequences he postulated.
I then found it was a "tribal point" going around, that he was repeating without investigating.
This claim that taxes now are the highest ever felt like the same sort of "tribal point."
How does one challenge an seemingly wrong assertion without also being labelled "tribal"? Especially in a field so contentious as this where there are position papers upon position papers for- and against- just about every point you can think of.
FWIW, I think the premise is flawed. Rich people put their assets in trusts and foundations, which are not subject to the same taxes, and yet controlled by the them and their family.
(For example, "Patagonia Billionaire Who Gave Up Company Skirts $700 Million Tax Hit; Founder Yvon Chouinard structured the transfer of his firm in a way that keeps control within the family and avoids taxes." - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-15/patagonia... )
Because those savings aren't paid taxes, they don't show up in charts which summarize only those taxes paid.
So when "liberals in the US [talk about how] taxes are too low", I believe it also refers to the legal techniques rich people use to avoid paying taxes, including through laws which were specifically created for this purpose.
I agree 100%, I would guess that he was probably repeating 'taxes are the highest ever' that he heard on a conservative talk show or FoxNews or something. I think the taxes as a % of GDP data is not perfect but it's at least a fairly reliable well studied ratio that avoids the problems with the details of tax rates as you point out, tax rates don't correlate well with taxes paid so looking at them is misleading at best.
I don't know how you qualify that. I would qualify it as extreme. The fact that "most people are not companies" doesn't matter, what matters is where the wealth is.
If anything, sending arbitrary amounts of money to be spent on the interest to pay for the debt of corrupt and failed political ventures is not fair in any regard.
If taxes actually paid for government services, you might have a point, but they do not.
That blog post seems weirdly anachronistic: that cartoon might have predicted 2005 astonishingly well, but in 2022, how often do we really use our phones for two-way real-time audio? How often do you actually hear a ringtone begging for immediate attention?
Quite a bit for 2 way audio. I think people don’t choose garish ringtones (e.g. crazy frog, nokia ringtone) so much now and they pick up a lot quicker these days. Someone leaving their phone at a desk and it ringing and ringing seemed more common back in the day. Might be modern phones don’t let that happen.
