If you work for 40 years, chances are you will have accumulated some assets. I'm not sure that "sell your house and cars to pay for food" is a policy that will be popular.
Equally those same people have paid taxes for 40 years, paid into social security (to the benefit of their elders) and so on.
Keeping them in the work-force is largely undesirable. A job occupied by a 70 year old is a job not occupied by someone younger. If retirement age was say 80 instead of 60, there would be 25% fewer jobs to go around. (using imprecise simple math).
Look, most all of us will get old and eventually claim on social security or whatever. Politically just "ending that" is pretty much a non-starter to anyone who has been contributing for any length of time. Even fiddling with the edges of it (raising the retirement age) will get you voted out of office.
More seriously though, it's not as simple as 25% fewer jobs, or an economy that grows 25%. For example the number of elected positions is pretty fixed, and all those octogenarians in the senate are certainly blocking younger talent.
Politics may be an extreme example, but lots of other jobs are "proportional". There's a fixed number of plumbing jobs (per million head of population) so adding 25% more plumbers dilutes the plumbing pool. A boon in construction would drive up the demand for plumbers, but construction booms come and go.
The "economy" is (again simplistically) a measure of money flow. It doesn't really measure "production" as much as it measures "cash velocity". As such having a retired tranche spending all day long is a good thing.
And yes, more labor would lead to a growing economy. But a lot of that growth is in "poor quality" jobs (aka service level jobs) not "new production".
In other words the economy "grows" if money changes hands quickly. The standard of living though is more tied to "production".
Take, for example, health care. The sector can grow 25% by adding more admin staff, claims evaluators etc. None of which results in better health outcomes. Or it can grow by building hospitals, training doctors and nurses. Both increase the economy, both offer more jobs, but only one leads to a higher standard of health.
In truth the current economy is built around the customers free time. From music, movies and tv, to sports, travel, phones, social media, online advertising and sales, deliveries (of goods or people), restaurants (fast or slow), home improvement, it's all about monetizing free time.
Having a large customer base with nothing but free time is what makes it all work.
> Keeping them in the work-force is largely undesirable.
That presumes there are a fixed number of jobs. Anyone can create a job, even doing simple things like going door to door and offering to mow the lawn.
People do it all the time. One man companies are commonplace. They come to my door now and then, selling magazine subscriptions, offering to clean my driveway, do yard work, tree trimming, exterminating, carry off junk, do estate sales for you, and so forth.
I remember one guy who had a one man outfit that replaced broken garage door springs. It was all he did. He had a trunk full of springs.
Any decent real estate agent has a rolodex of these people, who are hired to do what is necessary to prep a house for sale.
Yes I came to say the same thing. It's a truism that people don't care about supply till it stops.
Interruptions of supply cause people to get antsy. They start looking for alternatives. A drought leads to a surge in well-points and bore holes. Rainwater collection goes up. Electricity outages lead to generators, solar and so on, all easily installed at domestic level.
Food shortages lead to more strategic agriculture choices. Oil shortages start to make EVs more attractive. This is the first major interruption in oil supply since the 70s. I start to think the next car I buy will be electric. I already have solar so it makes sense.
The biggest way to change society is to make the perception that supply is precarious or expensive. Long after the drought ends, the lessons remain.
The leading climate-denier voice , who rails against clean energy, has also caused a world-wide understanding of how precarious our oil supply is. That lesson will stick, regardless of your politics.
Your categorization of math, logic and programming as "girly" is hilarious.
When I grew up those were the very definition of "not girly". Our math and comp sci faculties at uni would bend over backwards for any of the girl students.
I would agree though that academics in general were "not manly" and at school at least streams of "academic" or "sporty" existed. For boys anyway.
For the girls (less fascinated by sports) the top sporties were often top academics as well.
History has shown that being academic is always better than sporty (if you gave to pick one.) The "status" given to sports is often an acknowledgment that it's a poor financial path, but we can offer "status" instead.
Yes, sports metaphors can be amusing, but its the winners we're smiling at.
I was being sarcastic (I at least hoped it was obvious). There is probably nothing as illogical as assigning a gender to a logic - or maths or science for that matter. I also find it pretty stupid how “girly” is considered an insult. I prefer girly to being thick.
So use it. I've been programming for 45 years, and I've found it to be a really useful tool.
I'm still writing code, still doing all the fun stuff, but I'm moving along MUCH faster than before. Mostly because when I get stuck I ask the AI questions. About the code, about the API I'm talking to and so on. In the past I remember spending days finding really obscure bugs, or reading soooo much material to try and figure out that "in this case call A before B, but in that case call A before C.".
To me, it's made programming (the creative) part more fun, while removing the unfun stuff (like bug fixing.)
I'm using "chat" more than agents though - The AI doesn't edit my code directly.
My company doesn't really care how we use it, just as long as we use it to make ourselves faster. "Ignoring" it out of some nostalgia for the past is not helpful from an employer perspective.
I certainly don't miss the pre-internet days (when you sought out programming books, and coded with a reference manual in one hand) or the even the google days where trying to do the right search lead you to some answer you could kinda interpret.
Yeah I use AI from Google search then I type I'm a sample piece of code.
The vibe coding where you have the side panel say copilot integrated into vs code and android...
Idk it's like ego I guess. Anytime somebody presents some app I'm like "wow you made that? Crazy" then it's like "no AI made it" and I'm like oh...
I mean I'm gonna do it since I'm broke and can't quit right now but I am gonna leave eventually. Find another way to make money.
It's not about just making money it's hopefully passion/joy of doing it. I have coworkers gloating like "I only work 10 hours a week since AI codes fo me" which is fine but I also think it's an ends to a means thing. No passion... which again is fine personal choice but not my choice for me.
Yry and separate your sense of self worth from your job. You are not defined by your job.
A job is primarily a way of adding value - you sell your time and get paid.
If your job offers you more than just money that's great. But if you find your satisfaction elsewhere that's better. Jobs can come and go, nothing is guaranteed.
Of course you want to do your job well. Of course you want to be the best version of yourself. But ultimately you are selling your time to your employer, it belongs to them not you.
Personally I love my job. But if it ended tomorrow I'd be OK. My job is part of who I am, but I am more than just my job. I would morn it like a dead relative. But I will exist after my job is done.
The only reason I'm concerned with the job ending is I don't have savings just poor life decisions
It's crazy though what co-pilot is doing in Android Studio, it's going through hardware stuff that's beyond what I can do and I'm just typing in words.
I'm getting the picture, the car still needs a driver.
Yeah I need money so I'll focus on that/do well to keep the job. I can do passion on my own time.
>> People say communism is worse, but the problem is that communism was a response to capitalism.
Capitalism of a sort, but not how we understand it today. If we're talking about the Russian revolution of 1917 that wasn't really "capitalism" as we would describe it today. It was closer to feudalism with a very small aristocracy controlling all the resources, while treating the "workers" with extreme brutality.
Even then it's arguable that the 1st world war was the spark that made the revolution possible. Partly because the extensive mobilization allowed for "worker leaders" to become visible (ie at NCO levels) while at the same time swelling the army numbers (and it was those conscripted army folk that provided the back-bone to the revolution itself.)
While it's fair to say "the workers had no access to capital" - and that was certainly a part of the problem - the underlying factor was the aristocratic system.
Bear in mind that Russia at the time was still very much in the "monarchy" stage, unlike France (French Revolution) or the UK (English Civil War) which are much clearer as being "against the monarchy". The Russian revolution lead to Communism (more accurately described as Authoritarianism) than some form of elected parliament. (The English and French systems had elections, but voting was limited in lots of ways.)
The problem with Communism was less about the political ideals, and more about implementation. China is communist today, and doing really well. But the system is unlike Leninism or Stalinism. (Or indeed different to Mao's China.) "Communism" works best when there is a lot of local control and less central control. Central control (Lenin, Stalin et al) failed for much the same reason the Tsars failed - too few people benefiting from the system as a whole.
Ironically what we're seeing now (in the US) is the consolidation of wealth to the few. The tendency to authoritarianism in govt. I'm not sure that the US form of Capitalism (as we see it today) is "worker friendly".
I would suggest that Europe is on a better path - a broad mix of democracy (ie multi-party voting), socialism (an understanding that a society does better when looking after the bottom) and capitalism (the ability to start your own business, make profits and so on.) Allowing, but then tempering, the rampant greed for ever larger piles of money, and social control, seems like a win.
Personally I don't like the tab key for field change.
Firstly it was a breaking change from dos. Dos programs used Enter. And enter meant you could capture numeric data using 1 hand, since the numeric keypad has an enter key.
That means left hand can stay on the (paper) source. Right hand types. People got fast at this. (Really fast). And this pattern lives on in some programs kline Excel).
Lots of people (ie my customers) hated needing both hands on the keyboard. Lots of our programs allowed mapping of enter=tab.
I should be clear. It's not the "name" of the key that matters, it's the location.
The dual-use of the key is just an annoyance we live with. Sometimes the key behaves as a navigator, but in other cases it behaves as a spacer. Daft. (Enter would have the same problem. )
The best solution (by far) would gave been to add another key to the keyboard. Preferably in the numeric key pad. We got lots of new keys in that era. Hindsight says we should have added a "move on" key at that time.
I have used plenty of DOS programs back in the late 80s/early 90s, and I don't remember a single one that used "enter" to move between fields. Most of the time, "enter" closes the dialog. They all use TAB to move to the next field.
But maybe you're talking about even older software?
Because hundreds of developers, multiple open source projects and the backing of major corporations made it happen, not because Microsoft wanted it but in spite of it.
In this case the route to success was via marketing (isn't it always so?), via market share, via application dominance (attracting developers to develop for the platform), and via insane levels of backward's compatibility. It was successful not because of the code itself (end users don't care 2 figs about the elegance of the code) but because they optimized for the end user experience.
Linux optimized for the experienced, technically adept user, who wanted to fiddle, customize and could write programs. Apple optimized for the "now", ignoring the past and regularly made existing programs obsolete and unrunnable.
I wrote windows programs in 1995. They still run today. They have run on all versions of Windows since then, without even a recompile. Everything I have [1] just keeps running. And it turns out, that's something users really want.
I get that we're all technical folk here. I get that we strive for technical excellence and elegance. I get that we operate in the "now", ignoring hardware and software from the past. But the market is different, and wants different things. If you want a successful business you need to understand the market, not just your own aesthetics. Microsoft understands that, and that's why the market (especially the business market) relies on them.
[1] - Except games. Copy protection on some of my games means they don't run anymore - but to be fair those were hacks designed specifically to prevent the game running in the first place.
The article defines "success" in the Windows context as being "available everywhere". It does not address how it got to that point.
And sure, you might not like Microsoft, and you may not like how it became successful (using the above definition) but the fact that it is available everywhere is not in dispute.
Of course most successful things have murky pasts. We don't necessarily agree with how it got there, but there it is. That is, at least in the technical sense irrelevant. You may prefer LP's or CD's, but streaming is now the successful way to get your music.
That doesn't mean it's the only way though, and of course you are free to not use Windows programs, or play games via Steam etc. That is your choice.
Equally those same people have paid taxes for 40 years, paid into social security (to the benefit of their elders) and so on.
Keeping them in the work-force is largely undesirable. A job occupied by a 70 year old is a job not occupied by someone younger. If retirement age was say 80 instead of 60, there would be 25% fewer jobs to go around. (using imprecise simple math).
Look, most all of us will get old and eventually claim on social security or whatever. Politically just "ending that" is pretty much a non-starter to anyone who has been contributing for any length of time. Even fiddling with the edges of it (raising the retirement age) will get you voted out of office.
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