Google robot is 'the end of manual labor'

[HughBeaumont]

85. See, you're coming from an idealist perspective that American power brokers are reasonable.

That, in the face of economic disaster, they're going to do what's right for and by their constituents . . . all we have to do is demand that they do something.

I'm going to let you in on a secret: THEY'RE NOT AND THEY WON'T.

Why?

In this case, past performance IS a guarantee of future results. Look how behind we are on universal education, universal health care, infrastructure, taxation, public transportation and human rights in general.

When "The Decider" and his cabal of war criminals were rattling their usual war drums on their favorite Middle Eastern punching bags, millions of people around the world took to the streets and demanded that a peaceful situation be enacted. The Decider with his raised middle fingers pretty much told them to go pound sand and went anyway, unleashing needless death and destruction while dealing resources with the same nation that attacked us.

This sort of nonsense is what happens when people who would be OK with a mass culling of humanity are running things. It does not matter one iota to those in power whether it's urgently necessary to institute action that prevents societal and economic cataclysm. What are we going to do, beat them up if they don't do what we want? Vote them out so someone worse or even more milquetoast replaces them?

And then there's our incredibly passive and lobotomized citizenry . . . . GOD. America's conditioned, SO well.

They believe the CEO myth that "retaining executive talent" requires lotteries, or they'll be disincentivized. While at the same time, taking money away from people who have to spend and save every dime will . . . are you ready . . . motivate them to get a better life (search me how you pay to better yourself when you have no disposable income).

They hear the words "Democratic Socialism" and all of a sudden, "L'Internationale" goes off in their heads, with propaganda visions of threshers in the Soviet wheat fields or 1980s Cuba or some shit.

We're expected to just rugged individualize our own futures . . . . lack of patronage, privilege, luck, resources and time be damned, it's expected to JUST HAPPEN and if it doesn't, it's our fault for not trying hard enough and that's that. That's the way America and it's Crapitalism works. I don't like it anymore than anyone else, but I'm not one ounce optimistic that people are going to change and demand something better. I'm just not.

And it doesn't really matter if it's necessary or not . . . the fact is, Dubya's war 'n' rich people's tax cut spending has put us in an improbable conundrum to fund a Universal (insert benefit here) in the first place. With mass unemployment . . . short of making some powerful people bite some bitter not-able-to-shelter-it economic and tax pills, I'm not seeing where the revenue is going to come from. There are posters here that have said Universal Health Care will never work without an additional VAT (a Ted Cruz staple, but he wants to eliminate the IRS on top of it) or an across-the-board 50% tax hike (which America would never stand for). How would Guaranteed Minimum Income ever be funded?