Alex Ames
amablue.bsky.social
Alex Ames
@amablue.bsky.social
I'm just this guy, you know?
My wife and I eloped and used the money as a down payment on a house.
December 29, 2024 at 6:27 AM
The one that lost the election.
December 26, 2024 at 6:48 PM
Obviously. But they did win the election.
December 26, 2024 at 6:48 PM
The fact that we are where we are is because we didn't vote blue no matter who.
December 25, 2024 at 7:48 AM
Well, clearly not her *entire* life. Just the entirety of her life up to the point where I stole 'em.
December 24, 2024 at 6:06 AM
I want there to be less corporation in Congress which is why I want then to be paid well. There's is a lot of real world evidence that poorly paid legislators are more corrupt and well paid ones are less likely to sell out. You just assume they're all corrupt and deserve nothing.
December 23, 2024 at 10:02 PM
In this scenario are you forcing them to live away from their constituents too? Or are they allowed to travel to their home in their home district to spend time with their family and constituents? Why do you think they'd subject themselves to this level of control rather than just repeal the law?
December 23, 2024 at 7:09 PM
They would not live in the provided room and start in their illegitimately acquired mansions and drive in their limos.
December 23, 2024 at 6:49 PM
That's a recipe for only having the independently wealthy and corrupt run for office.
December 23, 2024 at 5:56 PM
Being a mechanic is absolutely a skilled field. What is the argument that it isn't?

Lots of people learn about cars outside of school. That's still prior knowledge and skills! It doesn't have to be learned in a trade school or college or whatever.
December 23, 2024 at 7:26 AM
I don't think that's true.
December 23, 2024 at 7:21 AM
No it isn't! That distinction would still exist and that's fine. It's not a piece of capitalist propaganda that we need to fight against, it's just plainly true that some jobs you can walk into on day 1 with no previous skill and start doing them, and others you cannot.
December 23, 2024 at 7:18 AM
Yes there is: Whether or not the job you are being hired to do requires prior skills and knowledge.

Paying people for the labor of getting an education doesn't change the fact that some jobs will require prior skills and knowledge and others won't. This is a perfectly fine observation to make.
December 23, 2024 at 7:16 AM
Right but that's irrelevant. There would still be jobs for unskilled laborers and jobs for skilled laborers regardless of whether or not schooling was free or even paid. Some skills aren't even things that you specifically train for at a school, and some skills come from previous jobs.
December 23, 2024 at 7:08 AM
What? Off the job training would exist under any economic system.
December 23, 2024 at 6:53 AM
Its just a dumb dichotomy. The real division is between capital and land, not subdivisions of various kinds of wealth. Private property is good and should stay. Unearned economic rents are what we need to publicly redistribute for the public good rather than let them be privately captured.
December 23, 2024 at 6:52 AM
We have lots of evidence at this point that underpaying Congress doesn't get you service minded people, it gets your people who find less savory ways to make their position more lucrative for them. If you want the best people you need to pay well.
December 22, 2024 at 6:43 AM
The implication of me comment was not that we hire tech bros
December 22, 2024 at 5:41 AM
Good economies do more to raise the m wages than seeing a minimum.

400k is the price of a single senior engineer in silicon valley. We should want the pay for government to be competitive with that level of pay to attract the best candidates rather than losing then to private industry.
December 22, 2024 at 5:29 AM
Why does that make the definition useless?
December 21, 2024 at 1:01 AM
I don't think it is. It's anyone who labors for wages. A landlord doesn't labor for wages, nor does a share holder. They get their money through ownership of land or stock.

They might incidentally also be workers, but people can be members of more than one class and have competing incentives.
December 20, 2024 at 7:51 PM
The reason private unions tend to work better is that both workers and owners have an incentive to keep the business afloat, which tethers their demands to the reality of what the business can produce. Public unions don't have that constraint, which invites corruption.
December 20, 2024 at 6:27 PM
People are more than one thing. Workers can also be owners, and owners can also do work. They have multiple competing incentives within them. Some workers are incentivized strongly to work toward owners interests.
December 20, 2024 at 6:26 PM
I don't know if you're getting a house in the Hamptons, but we should at least allow people who want to build housing to build in places where there is demand rather than mandate scarcity.
December 19, 2024 at 2:50 AM
The housing we have isn't where it needs to be.
December 19, 2024 at 2:05 AM