Health Advisor: Ebola Still Spreading, Worst Outbreak We've Ever Seen 244
Lasrick writes After four decades of confining Ebola outbreaks to small areas, experts acknowledged in an October 9 New England Journal of Medicine article that "we were wrong" about the scope of the current situation. At the present transmission rate, the number of Ebola cases in West Africa doubles every two to three weeks. Early diagnosis is the key to controlling the epidemic, but that's far easier said than done: "And there are several complicating factors. For one thing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 60 percent of all Ebola patients remain undiagnosed in their communities." A transmission rate below 1 is necessary to keep the outbreak under control (instead of the current rate of 1.5 to 2), and the authors detail what's in the works to help achieve early detection, which is crucial to reducing the current transmission rate.
Is it still October 9? (Score:3, Funny)
I had a crazy dream where it was 26th of November and the number of new ebola cases had been dropping for the last five weeks.
Re:Is it still October 9? (Score:5, Informative)
you're right, that is a crazy dream because the ebola outbreak tracker [tickermadness.com] shows that the number of new cases has been relatively stable (albeit noisy) for the last couple weeks. contrary to the summary, however, the tracker shows that ebola cases are doubling every 46 days, not 2-3 weeks.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
you're right, that is a crazy dream because the ebola outbreak tracker [tickermadness.com] shows that the number of new cases has been relatively stable (albeit noisy) for the last couple weeks. contrary to the summary, however, the tracker shows that ebola cases are doubling every 46 days, not 2-3 weeks.
Source is 'Wikipedia'. Hmmm. Be more inclined to take it seriously if it was sourced from WHO, or MSF, etc...
Re: (Score:3)
it's a visual representation of up-to-date data on wikipedia that is sourced from WHO. follow sources much? [citation provided]
Re: Is it still October 9? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Is it still October 9? (Score:2)
Anyone aware of a site publishing current and accurate infection rate info?
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is, the rate of new infections is horribly noisy and it's hard to see trends. Much easier to look at the rate of cumulative infections
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone aware of a site publishing current and accurate infection rate info?
What we desperately need is a worldwide network of computing devices so that information can be disseminated digitally at light speed instead of the current laborious printing and physical distribution process.
Re: (Score:3)
From the Wikipedia page.
Major Ebola virus outbreaks by country and by date – 3 September to most recent WHO / Gov update
Wikipedia's source is valid.
Re: (Score:2)
Wikipedia is a starting point for research, not an endpoint. Provided in every page is source citations, in keeping with Wikipedia Rule #1: "No original research".
I trust Wikipedia citations (usually back to source) over Fox News (who don't provide ANY source linkage, just poorly written stories) any day of the week.
Re: (Score:2)
. Only problem is, in 46 days we will have to deal with double the number of cases which will make it twice as hard as now to contain the spread.
Is -that- what the data is saying though?
Those charts show "cumulative cases", so they can never do anything but go up. If 1000 people a year get ebola, that's not an outbreak, but the cumulative cases will still hit 30,000 in 2030. That's not showing a doubling of the problem relative to today.
To see how close the problem is to being under control we need to trend
But the press has stopped talking about it... (Score:5, Insightful)
So it must not exist any more. Right?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: But the press has stopped talking about it... (Score:2)
The Republicans only pwn a single news channel.
FTFY.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
How has 'the press' stopped talking about it, if you're reading about a related story in /.?
Even if by 'press' you're thinking CNN, Fox News, WSJ, NY Times: They all have recent articles about Ebola.
CNN: Sierra Leone: Ebola burial team dumps bodies in pay protest
Fox News: US quarantine moves hurting Ebola response in Africa, experts say
WSJ: Ebola Vaccine Appears Safe in Early Test
NY Times: Sierra Leone to Eclipse Liberia in Ebola Cases
All from within the last few hours.
Maybe some others?
Reuters: Ebola vacci
Re: (Score:3)
You are forgetting a crucial thing. Ebola is fairly hard to catch. Ebola is highly contagious when the people who have it very very sick they aren't going to supermarkets because they can't get up to walk. That's why the cases in the USA were easy to isolate and control. 1000x as many cases would still be easy to isolate and control.
America has a good communication system. We have a strong legal system. We have a government whom in large measure we trust and obey and is thus able to coordinate action.
He is forgetting a LOT more than that. (Score:2)
He assumes constant or rising speed of spreading of the disease and constant or increasing contact with the diseased.
While ignoring ANY possibility of lowering of those factors by various means.
From governmental blockades of travel, through people avoiding contact on their own, up to changes in weather as we are moving into a winter which will make moving of humans and viruses across continents slower, harder and easier to spot.
In short...
http://xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Just curious.
Re: (Score:2)
Even the Republicans still believe in the germ theory of disease. So far that isn't partisan.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Africa is kind of the worst case as far as poverty, density, bad governments... There are places in Asia which are bad but again it would be contained to isolated areas. South America I'm having more trouble seeing where the problem is. Those countries have a health and communications infrastructure. too.
Re: (Score:3)
She didn't get it from touching her face with a glove. She got it from touching an extremely sick person with a glove and then not handling the glove properly. Humans are a vital part of the incubation process. Humans are extremely ill at the time they are producing large quantities of the virus. Because the virus' first objective is the circulatory system which isn't an unsued part of the body when they are running around on a rush hour su
Re: (Score:2)
Yes read your own link
may have touched her face with the gloves of her protective suit while caring for a priest who died of the disease, a doctor treating her said on Wednesday.
She got it from a very sick person. And that's what you keep ignoring. People don't walk around and spread ebola. There is no global pandemic because the contagious are limited in who they infect.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously Ebola has had way more chance to evolve in the last 6 months than it has in the previous 2 centuries. There are two likely mutations for Ebola:
1) Becoming more contagious.
2) Not destroy the target's ability to move around at the point of maximum infection.
To do both of those it has to do less damage to the circulatory system before spreading to the rest of the body. That is become much less lethal and slower moving in the body. That is start acting more like a flu and less like a kil
Re: (Score:3)
Obviously Ebola it pretty hard to catch unless you're caring for someone who's in the vomiting/diarrhea stage of the disease and if you're that sick you're not going to be in supermarkets and packed subway trains. It's been long enough now that we know neither the Dallas nurse who had it and flew in an airplane nor the doctor who went bowling and took the subway in NYC gave it to anybody. None of the folks who Thomas Eric Duncan lived with in Dallas came down with it. If it's that hard to catch I'm not t
Re: (Score:2)
So you think the fact that nobody in the US besides the two nurses who were caring for Duncan at his sickest have come down with Ebola is just dumb luck? The fact is the Ebola virus unlike the flu virus does not survive outside of the body for any length of time. Once any Ebola containing mucus dries out the virus is history. If there were any examples of random people catching it by the methods you speculate about I'd be more sympathetic to your viewpoint but it hasn't happened. I won't be wetting my p
Actually doubles in 60 days (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless of sourcing the information, the information is incorrect. According to this graph [wikipedia.org], Ebola is doubling every 60 days now -- so there has been some improvement.
Best way to keep up on this, that I can tell, is to google "ebola africa timeline wiki", and pan down to the timeline, near the bottom of the article. You'll see the graphs.
My favorite graph for keeping track is the logarithmic scale based on population [wikipedia.org], because it's easy to see where infection totality is: it used to be at 1 1/2 years, and now is about 5 years out.
Another thing of interest that I noted, though: The infection rates before a country mounts a serious response, can be as fast as doubling every 3 or 5 days. For that reason, I think our CDC's active attempts to STOP a proper response, was the worst thing they could do.
Just something to think about.
Re: (Score:3)
Ebola isn't the enemy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Around here people treat the news about Ebola like it's just another H1N1 outbreak and think nothing further of it. The schools are literally a walk-in petridish and the hygiene at the cafeterias are terrible, kids just dash in for seconds and dab their spoons gleefully into the pots and pans for more, and the next week - half of the kids and teachers are sick with the common flu. Imagine that scenario when we've got Ebola on the move.
We have lots of people who have families in Africa, they come over with their friends ALL the time, and they attend the same schools as the natives do, it's just a matter of time before this becomes a uncontrollable problem.
Proper hygiene needs to be taught, and before we know how to control this, we should limit the traveling from and to infected countries.
Personally I've stacked up like crazy, I've filled my house to the brim with food and stuff needed to cope with that time when the outbreak will be at its worst. Again - it's not Ebola I fear...I fear the people who will get desperate when they reap the fruit of their own ignorance.
Life is not a disaster movie (Score:2)
When shit gets real there's more "the spirit of the blitz" than Mad Max. Compare the hysterics of meteor movies with Russian dashcam footage where the real thing is not even enough to turn down the stereo, let alone stop driving.
Re:Ebola isn't the enemy... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Ebola was that easy to catch don't you think some of the people on the airplane with the Dallas nurse or some of the people who were on the subway with the New York doctor or especially some of the people Thomas Eric Duncan was staying with in Dallas would have caught it? The only people I know of who have caught Ebola are medical workers caring for those who are at the vomiting/diarrhea stage of the disease. I think the chances of a major outbreak in the US are close to zero.
clearly... (Score:2)
NEJM is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy harping on the dangers of Ebola merely because faux news tells them to?
nothingofvaluewaslost? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the time I'm reading this submission, it's tagged with "nothingofvaluewaslost". I can't fathom what this is supposed to mean. Lives in West Africa are worthless? Deaths in a developing country are meaningless because there's no economic impact? Am I missing some subtlety or other message here?
What a cynical, awful tag.
Re: (Score:2)
At the time I'm reading this submission, it's tagged with "nothingofvaluewaslost". I can't fathom what this is supposed to mean. Lives in West Africa are worthless? Deaths in a developing country are meaningless because there's no economic impact? Am I missing some subtlety or other message here?
What a cynical, awful tag.
You give the masses anonymity, you get to see the worst of humanity. Try not to let it get to you. As a species, we suck, but not all of us are bad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
respecting culture is one thing, but not pointing out that a custom they're practising is directly responsible for the death of their families and likely eventually them selves.. doesn't seem like a bigoted attitude
your retort on the other hand.
Re:Burial customs? (Score:5, Insightful)
What did he say that is even the slightest bit racist? It is actually what the WHO and many other organisations are saying. The burial customs involve in many cases, touching, kissing and washing the body, these are massive problems and have been one of the primary vectors of infection. Their culture is killing them, for the time being they need education that they must restrain from those customs, which if I understand correctly is actually happening.
Re: (Score:2)
What did he say that is even the slightest bit racist? It is actually what the WHO and many other organisations are saying. The burial customs involve in many cases, touching, kissing and washing the body, these are massive problems and have been one of the primary vectors of infection. Their culture is killing them, for the time being they need education that they must restrain from those customs, which if I understand correctly is actually happening.
How would you like it if I referred to "American culture" as being inbred, illiterate, murderous halfwits with no teeth and a shitty banjo, because I've seen Deliverance?
Re:Burial customs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quit being such an entitled white racist asshole with your critiques of their culture.
No, the entitled assholes are the ones who feel no reason to stop doing the very things that are spreading the disease. You're the one with the skin color obsession, everyone else is talking about what people actually do. Like laying hands on the corpse of someone who's just died of Ebola, while simultaneously asking the rest of the world to risk their lives and spend their money and time to come help ... even as they refuse to stop their idiotic, suicidal customs. That is a sense of entitlement, and a ridiculous part of a culture that simply has to stop if they want to quit spreading that disease around.
Re: (Score:2)
At the risk of repeating the obvious, there is no such thing as an homogenous "African culture".
Re: (Score:2)
Rapidly converging with the US average. Increased communication is paying off.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They'd be fools to do so merely on the word of a clearly hostile outsider, and even if they believe you, the perceived risk from Ebola might still be smaller than the perceived risk from social isolation.
Luckily, they (say, a village family in rural Ghana) are equipped with essentially the same meat computer your are. They are perfectly able to perceive the fact that the neighbor is dying with blood pouring out of her body, just like tens of thousands of other people just have. They are able to perceive that the ultimate social isolation is having everyone you care about die. It's nice to see you're not one of those people who thinks that a farmer in Liberia, who deals with life and death every day as he t
Re: (Score:2)
With regards to Ferguson you are confusing attitude with culture. Attitudes can become culture, but take time. Attitudes can be formed quickly, especially by things like overzealous police and other forms of daily aggravation. That will fester and sometimes boil over if these aggravations continue for a long enough period of time. Ferguson could have been avoided by trying to claw back the ridiculous, heavy-handed actions of the police across the country. Of course their overzealotry can be explained b
Re: (Score:2)
But not the same cultural programming. Also, you are making the assumption that people base their behaviour on coolly considering rewards and risks, when this is not even remotely true, especially in high-risk situations. What they'll do is follow their habits.
Re: (Score:2)
look at places like Ferguson, MO, where culture just decided to burn down local shops in a tantrum over reality disagreeing with an instantly concocted bogus media mythology
Without a long history of white police treating black people badly, a single incident would not have sparked such protests.
The truth or otherwise of that single incident is not the real issue, as of course you know.
Re: (Score:2)
Without a long history of white police treating black people badly, a single incident would not have sparked such protests.
Without a wildly higher-than-average rate of violent crime among young black men in some areas, cops in those areas wouldn't be having to face every situation like another one in which they might get killed doing something simple like a traffic stop. And do you really think that there'd have been riots in Ferguson if the breathless media reports immediately in the wake of what happened had been reporting the observations of credible witnesses instead of the absurdly transparent lies of the criminal running
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You probably find it odd that in a lot of places in the world people "choose" to drink filthy contaminated water out of a mud hole instead of opening a clean bottle from their fridge.
Re: (Score:2)
grind the bones of the dead into banana paste
I'd think that the cause of that tribe dying might be linked to the fact that they had bones made of bananas in the first place.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I say everyone just blockade west Africa. Nobody goes in or comes out and let the problem resolve itself.
Funny, the rest of the world is starting to say that about the U.S.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually the computer was invented in Germany, and my CPU was developed in Israel. Most of the rest of the parts were developed and manufactured in Asia.
In fact, I can't find a single component in my computer which is from the US. Nor in my network solution, or the network of my house.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Is the string of experts saying how wrong they were after the fact.
Well, they're one up on the austerity fetishists who have been predicting runaway inflation for the last 8 years unless we slash government spending.
Re: (Score:2)
The Fed created a couple trillion in new money to feed to the government for spending. That might have been enough to cause a currency collapse except for 2 things: other currencies were mostly worse, and the Fed paid banks billions (I'll wait while you recover from the surprise) to store a couple trillion in reserves with the Fed - so the net money in circulation didn't actually change much.
But as the economy recovers, the banks will likely withdraw that money from the Fed and invest it more profitably, p
Re: (Score:2)
What will happen is that the banks will invest the money in various "financial instruments", creating fortunes that'll never exist anywhere except on paper and melt a
Re: (Score:2)
Also, the economy can't recover because the same problem that keeps dragging it down still remains: people don't get paid enough to create enough demand to buy up everything the workforce can produce. As long as this situation persists, the only way to keep the economy even somewhat functional is to pump demand by flooding the market with cheap credit, with all the problems and risks that causes.
Every single economic recession in history looked like that. But we're already well on the upswing. Certainly everywhere around me (in the Seattle area) is hiring, from the minimum wages jobs to the construction sites to the tech companies.
The usual cycle starts up when people start buying durable consumer goods again: you put off buying that replacement car or washing machine or whatever when the future looks bleak, preferring to limp along with a somewhat-broken one. That demand broke out of the doldru
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
People aren't sitting on giant piles of treasure
Part of being a responsible adult is having enough savings to get you through hard times. Really.
One reason the crunch went on a while was "deleveraging" - maybe you heard the term - people deliberately paying down personal debt as they re-learned that lesson about adult responsibility, sobered up, and spent a few years borrowing less, to be less at the whim of the economy. Part of the reason for Japan's "lost decade" was carrying that to extremes, becoming I think the nation with the highest personal sav
Re: (Score:2)
The situation is not so much that honorable, well-meaning people are wrong in their predictions, but that they are a pack of craven fear mongers who are attempting to make the current inequities much worse, to the long-term detriment of the U.S., in order to provide their clients with more short term advantage.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure you're right. Government can print infinite money with no negative consequences down the line. The only reason everyone isn't a millionaire already is the greed of evil bankers. Why didn't anyone realize this before in all of history?
I mean, it's clear as day: you just spend more money that you make, and life is therefore better. I can see no flaw in this plan.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure you're right. Government can print infinite money with no negative consequences down the line. The only reason everyone isn't a millionaire already is the greed of evil bankers. Why didn't anyone realize this before in all of history?
I mean, it's clear as day: you just spend more money that you make, and life is therefore better. I can see no flaw in this plan.
Your first response was reasonable, but now your sarcasm just demonstrates willful ignorance. You didn't think about what I wrote, did you? You're on the side of the shameless thieves who are willing to degrade U.S. infrastructure, ruin countless lives, and stunt the country's recovery, for what... to put a relatively small percentage of additional wealth into the pockets of the rich.
What they're doing is like the mugger who bashes in the head of someone who earns $100K per year for the $50 in his wallet
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, what? Oh, wait, do you actually believe in cold fusion? Now I'm just confused ...
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck with that. Hope you don't have children.
Re: (Score:2)
The only mechanism they have for that is one they've long abandoned: raising the "fractional" in "fractional reserve currency" above 0. And they weren't aggressive about that during the Carter years, no reason to assume they'd do it here. A return to 5-10 years of 10-15% inflation is possible - heck it may even be the goal of the Fed (we'll certainly never pay down the current debt without something like that).
Re: (Score:3)
Don't sugar coat it.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not 100 percent fatal. The human race can survive it. The present society will of course perish.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't realize that the worst is yet to come once it really breaks out of the 3 African countries where is is pretty much out of control.
The thing is, it is under control in Guinea with new cases declining. Liberia and Sierra Leone seems to be the true make or break cases, but with some success in the past few weeks. It's still exponential growth, but doubling time has lengthened considerably. Even if they fail to contain Ebola in the end, this buys us some time.
Re:Ebola's not going away (Score:4, Insightful)
Hyperbole much?
Ebola, and it's like, have come and gone countless millions of times over the years. Granted, our population density helps them spread a little, but that's vastly outweighed in scale by just the existence of simple hygiene - let alone medical knowledge. A few hundred years ago, in some European countries, it was normal to defecate inside the house, and wear one long shirt that was also your underwear.
We're talking about a disease spreading in one of the poorest and most deprived regions of the world where medical assistance is almost non-existent and where getting some means mingling with thousands of others who are also ill.
In the entire history of humanity, we have "cured" exactly two diseases. Smallpox (which recent science articles suggest may be making a comeback in a mutated form) and rinderpest (ever heard of it? I haven't - because it only affects cattle).
Ebola might well kill people. Lots of people. It may even creep into first-world countries, even with proper medical control. But the fact is that there are ten times worse things out there, spreading just as virulently, and we are either ignoring them or we have them under control because they can be made not as deadly. Before the 1980's, nobody had heard of AIDS. Now your life expectancy with it is about the same as that without it, so long as you live in range of a hospital that can diagnose and treat it.
Ebola is nasty. I sure wouldn't want to come in contact with it. But if you think that it poses a threat to the human race as a whole, you're sadly mistaken.
The Black Death may have killed up to 200 million people - estimated at around HALF of the population of Europe at the time, before America was even discovered - in less than 10 years. It killed nearly a quarter of the entire world.
That's a serious pandemic. It's still around, 700 years later. There are outbreaks every now and then still. And it can be effectively wiped out with simple antibiotics. And we don't even have it on the notification list for the World Health Organisation any more.
Ebola is localised, contained, vulnerable to basic medical practice, and actually pretty treatable. And all the cases outside Africa have been contained and nobody containing them (apart from one very stupid nurse that can't obey simple medical practice) has died. That tells you just how vulnerable it is. And most of those cases were seeded by people HELPING OUT Ebola patients in the origin countries.
The problem is not that Ebola is going to come over into the first world countries and wipe us out or decimate the population. It's that the countries where it is present at the moment have notoriously inadequate medical facilities generally. But nobody focuses on that. Everyone is much more concerned with whether their health insurance would cover them if they got it.
And, I'll be honest, in Europe (who are much closer to Africa and have already seen Ebola-infected refugees cross the notoriously-difficult-to-police waters into Italy, and who have free-movement laws across the continent - except for the UK), it's not even a news story. Hasn't been for weeks. Nobody is worried.
Your worries about Ebola are caused by watching too much Fox News blowing things out of proportion for the sake of entertainment, not any basis in fact. If you were that worried, you'd send $10 to Médecins Sans FrontiÃres.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
wouldn't it be funny if someone called you on that? And publicly beat the snot out of you?
Re: (Score:2)
Of the 17 cases of Ebola that have occurred outside of Africa, 4 of them have died. One of them was in the USA.
Granted, a lot lower than 70% mortality rate, but by no means are Americans immune.
Re: (Score:2)
BTW... had it ever occurred to you actually link to the things you are talking about instead of just pretending to sound like you know what you are talking about by just expecting everyone else to do the same research that you allegedly did?
If you are going to claim to know something, then post the friggen links to the relevant material instead of just saying to other people that they should just go do it themselves like you claim you did... otherwise, for all anyone else knows, you're just full of a lot
Re: (Score:2)
The fed is not committed to maintaining inflation to stimulate investment. That's just the excuse they use to help themselves to the wealth of others.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually the opposite is the case. Our economy has exactly the opposite, but nonetheless equally destructive, problem communism had: They had a shortage of supply. We have a shortage of demand.
Our economy produces enough. Proof? Go anywhere and behold how desperately everyone wants to sell. Be it goods or services, You'll be hard pressed to NOT find someone offering whatever you may want to you. What's lacking is the demand. And without it, there is no market either.
If you think people need any kind of ince
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why a universal basic income is such a beautiful concept. It would remove from the equation human survival as an individual incentive - thus reducing the supply of workers when the work offers are not attractive enough, solving that particular problem.
If everyone had their basic survival guaranteed through an unconditional minimum wage, the work market would be driven by individual initiatives to create pretty things and to improve from that basic status by pursuing luxury.
The main fear against the UBI is that those incentives would not attract enough workers to support the needs of mankind as a whole, but I don't see evidence that this would be the case - the drive to be creative and improve your personal status are pretty strong ones.
Re: (Score:2)
"If everyone had their basic survival guaranteed through an unconditional minimum wage, the work market would be driven by individual initiatives to create pretty things and to improve from that basic status by pursuing luxury."
But the taxes needed to pay for the universal basic income would prevent anyone from improving from that basic status. Now Krugman stated a few years ago that the well-off were status-crazed workaholics who would keep on working even at 100% marginal rates. I don't agree, but then I
Re: (Score:2)
We have 100% marginal rates and people keep working.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm all for it. I'd quit my job tomorrow. Well, Monday. We're off tomorrow.
Regarding parent's and grandparents post, If there is too much supply for demand, the logical outcome is a fall in prices. This is called deflation. Inflation is exactly the wrong answer especially as it steals wealth from everyone and returns it in the form of money to the few wealthy bankers who get it handed to them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You say that as if it was a bad thing. How does it affect you negatively?
That's not a given, in particular if the work they would be forced to do is not productive but "show off", as you suggest. Do you mind to elaborate that idea and justify it, to explain what it makes sense to you?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure that's true. I've known too many people who were content doing absolutely nothing. They tend to be the disability types, always long on excuses and short on anything useful. Making people work for their wages makes sense. That's why I support a universal bonus income for people who work (coupled with a minimum wage to make sure that the bonus doesn't become a new way for the 0.1% to screw over the rest of us). The other half of making work people work is always having something for them to do. That's why I support the notion of work centers where people can show up and work is always available. It's the answer to the situation of telling someone to get a job when jobs aren't available.
You're then talking about "work centres" which just dole out busy work. When we had National Service in the UK there were people who spent a couple of years painting coal white one week then cleaning off the paint the next.
The ideal would be not to make everyone work x hours a week regardless, but to divide the work up so that everyone does y hours each, which hopefully with increasing automation would be about 20 hours a week.
Re: (Score:2)
Since we're far from having a shortage of workforce, I highly doubt the world as we know it would grind to a halt just because 10% of the people are lazy dicks. So let them do nothing. If they're content with just barely getting by with no form of "luxury" whatsoever (no car, no cable TV, no vacation, a tiny apartment...), let them be.
If you want more than existence, if you want to actually live, you better work.
Re: (Score:2)
I think that with BLS there should be no progressive tax rate. Instead, there should be flat tax rate from any income, to be paid immediately, preferably automatically, no excemptions. You get money, you pay your share and rest is yours. The more you work (or smarter you invest), the more you get, linearily.
Also no tax evasion or loopholes, and no bureaucracy.
This would apply to individuals, whether they were employed or self-employed, and taxation would only get more complex with bigger businesses.
Re: (Score:2)
This would apply to individuals, whether they were employed or self-employed, and taxation would only get more complex with bigger businesses.
It is not feasible to separate businesses and individuals, since high earners use business arrangements to reduce their tax burden.
Those billionaire business owners who pay themselves (through the company they control) an annual salary of $1 salary a year are doing so for tax reasons.
Re: (Score:2)
"And the main reason for this is simply that there are not enough people who have enough money to become consumers."
True only to a point. Then diminishing returns sets in as well. For instance, I could buy a camper, but I have little free time I could use to go camping. I could buy a new TV, but it would be only marginally better than the old one. I am sitting on brand new chair, which was bought because the old one wore out. The same thing happened to the dishwasher last month.
As far as material goods go,
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is also the distribution of wealth. As you correctly identified it, you being able to buy a TV is worth jack (for the economy) if you have no need for one because yours is already top of the line. But there's others who would want one but can't afford it.
To pull a blunt example, if you have 100 bucks and so do I, we can both go and buy a DVD player for 80. If you have 180 and I only have 20, you can buy one, but it's rather unlikely that you'll buy two.
Now, of course someone will butt in and say
Re: (Score:2)
Actually the opposite is the case. Our economy has exactly the opposite, but nonetheless equally destructive, problem communism had: They had a shortage of supply. We have a shortage of demand.
Our economy produces enough. Proof? Go anywhere and behold how desperately everyone wants to sell. Be it goods or services, You'll be hard pressed to NOT find someone offering whatever you may want to you. What's lacking is the demand. And without it, there is no market either.
If you think people need any kind of incentive to be ravenous asshole capitalists, think again. Those that could invest already want to. Quite badly, too. There just isn't anything to invest in, because there is no viable business possible without consumers that would want to buy what you'd offer. And the main reason for this is simply that there are not enough people who have enough money to become consumers. And jobs are sadly not created when someone wills a business into existence. Well, you can do that, but it's not really viable to produce without a chance to sell what you produce. You'll be bankrupt in no time.
A job is created when the market situation of demand forces the supply side into hiring additional personnel to fill that demand. Nobody in their sane mind creates a job for the sake of creating a job, paying another person and putting more goods he can't sell on the stockpile. If this is the situation (and that is the situation currently), the sane option is NOT to hire someone and NOT to produce more of what you can't already sell.
I fully concur with your statements. As corporations outsource jobs, the local net net discretionary income disappears. Only essentials are purchased. It's sad, as the American society has become a for profit everything, from public education to medicine. Even the military is a for profit institution. MacDonalds has become the location of "lets go out for an evening's supper"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Giving to the poor and lazy makes more jobs than giving to the rich.
Re: (Score:2)
So far the US bombed every remotely important country wanting to sell oil for Euros back into the stone age. Last time Ahmedingbats pondered aloud that he plans to have the Iran do so caused him to be pushed into the Axle of Evil.
Correlation doesn't imply causation. And it's worth noting that Iran hasn't experienced any serious consequences from the US for its alleged Euro-based oil trading since it doesn't sell its oil to the US.
Re: (Score:2)
No because the niggers will spread the nigger disease far beyond themselves.
And still the pox infested wankers in government here in the UK will not SHUT the borders cus they are shit scared of the shirt lifters in the EU .
Raving faggots the lot of them
We need to shut the doors tight no one in at all plenty out only thou one way jobs back to Somalia Nigeria Pakistan India China Japan and on and on and on ..
You appear to have forgotten to preface your interesting remarks with the customary "I am not a racist/homophobe but..."
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps the police would be more accommodating of blacks if they didn't commit nearly 60% of all crime while being only around 12% of the population.
You must be pretty stupid if you think those shit head statistics mean anything, when there is an obvious selection bias at play (EG. Minorities are statisticly targeted for investigation and prosecution). Do you even think for yourself, or do you just regurgitate shit you hear from your drinking buddies? You are either stupid, or have deceitful agenda. Either way, I don't like you.