That only works if there is a competent worker willing to do the job for the reduced pay.

Again, that only works if if there is an elsewhere to go to. You seem to consistently argue that the business has sole and ultimate power to set pay rates. That is just not true. You have a weird view of capitalism as a one-way street. If a single player or small group of players can entirely control market prices, then it is not capitalism. I think maybe you are not a capitalist, but rather a corporatist.

The market.

That built-in assumes that the workers will not find similar or even better compensation elsewhere. They have not even reached the point yet where that is a question. Google has already set the worth of the job, by definition, because they are paying it today. Now Google wants to arbitrarily reduce the worth of the job. But the market sets the worth, not Google. The labor market of desirable workers will decide whether or not that is a good move for Google.

If the worker is paid less, they should provide less work effort. If a commodity (labor) is worth a certain amount, and you pay less for it, you get less in return.

That's how capitalism works.

After all, the workers are not charities.

This assumes a simple linear relation between population count and COVID infection / death rate. That is possibly a misleading over-simplification.

I do agree that scientific research and politics overlap and inform each other especially in the realm of public health.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Anatole France, The Red Lily, 1894, chapter 7 French novelist (1844 - 1924)

Nope. It's likely to be self-inflicted. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

But that doesn't fit well within the narratives of either the pro or anti gun control crowds. It's not really scary or sensational, just sad.

Some of them did:

Source: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/26/hostess-twinkies-bankrupt/

And this was going on last year at the same time that the company was headed into bankruptcy again and management was asking for even more deep concessions from workers. From this and other things I have read, I get the impression that Hostess is a typical large company dealing with typical liability and productivity problems that couldn't manage through it.

I prefer one of my old professor's re-wording: "All models are wrong. Some are useful."

I agree, it sounds like an intractable problem to me. But Apple and a few other on-line retailers manage to do it. So it is possible. I wonder how complicated and expensive Apple's tax service is.

Not all of us. IMHO, native code in the browser is still a bad idea and an unnecessary one at that, regardless of who is doing it, Microsoft or Google. The state of the web is progressing very nicely without introducing potential security problems and platform dependencies. And yes, Google Native Client is platform specific to both hardware and OS. There are a few potential hiccups looming with (the language formerly known as) HTML5 and standard technologies like video codecs. But I'd still rather go that route than just go native.

I am a Mac-head and even I agree that the Macbook Pro is too pricey. But...

$399 laptops are pieces of crap. There, I said it. The material costs alone preclude building anything of quality at that price point. Why do people always bring up the absolute lowest possible price products when comparing to Apple? You could make the same point much better by comparing them to decent, average price laptops and still have a valid argument that the Macbook Pro is too expensive. I grit my teeth every time the topic of Apple laptops is brought up and someone makes the inevitable comparison to something that can barely play a Youtube video.

USB was an obscure curiosity when Apple aggressively adopted it in the original Bondi blue iMac. I clearly remember watching the market for USB peripherals be completely driven by demand from iMac (and then other Apple model) owners at a time when PC users stayed away from the technology because it was incompatible with all their PS2, serial and parallel port peripherals. Often the place to find USB equipment was in the Apple section in stores.

This one I remember very well. Apple spearheaded the consumer wireless market with the introduction of the $299 Airport "UFO" wireless hub. I had wanted wireless for a while but couldn't afford it. The only other options were all so far above that first Airport price point that it was a shock to the market. The other thing Apple did to lead in consumer wireless was to make it an option in all their computers, especially in laptops, and then a standard option that you had to de-select and finally as an unremovable feature.

Maybe so, but no sane PC user did back in those days. The floppy ruled the PC data storage and transfer world well past the point when Apple users had moved on to other technologies. It took forever for PC USB boot support to be common enough to supplant the ubiquitous PC admin's emergency boot floppy.

Everything you have said is technically true but misses the whole story. Sure, Apple didn't invent the technologies you mention but Apple's influence was instrumental in getting early adoption going and building markets for them.

It took me a lot of thinking to come around to the idea of a prebate being a good idea. As a check from the government, it echoed in my mind with the concept of "welfare check" with all its attendant welfare state issues. I had to work through the process of realizing that a prebate, like an income tax refund, is just giving people back their own money that was taken in the form of a tax, rather than giving them someone else's money that was redistributed through taxation. All you're doing with the prebate is acknowledging that there is a minimum level of living below which it is just plain immoral to tax. And since everyone gets the prebate, it is agnostic to income level in that everybody, whether wealthy or poor, gets a pass from taxation on basic necessities. I really like the fairtax.org idea but I doubt it will ever get passed in the US. Far too many monied and powerful interests like the current broken system for the ways in which it can be manipulated.

The fundamental definition of "poor" is that most of their spending is non-discretionary: food, clothing, shelter, medical care, etc. The defining aspect of "not poor" is having money left over after the necessities are covered, discretionary money that can be invested for the future. Basically, your argument here is that the poor should stop being so poor.

I agree, individuals who "waste" such opportunities rather than investing bear the responsibility for poor choices. I can only say that it can be hard to fight the natural tendency to want to enjoy temporary unexpected gain while it is there.

All it takes is one catastrophic medical problem to put you right back down there, irretrievably. Yes, lower economic status people can tend to make poor economic decisions. But the number 1 primary cause for individual bankruptcy in the US for a number of years has been catastrophic medical bills. Maybe instead of sneering at all those lazy and stupid poor people, you should be a little more thankful that your health and native abilities gave you the necessary tools to allow your hard work to pay off. It is good that you were able to better yourself but your attitude could stand for some considerable improvement.