I don't think there's a country in Europe that funds childcare remotely to the level of cost. The most generous I'm aware of is certain states / cities in Germany that provide free 'Kita', essentially Kindergarten. In addition to maternity leave, national insurance etc. But this certainly doesn't cover the numerous costs (including time off work etc) associated with having kids.
Would be an interesting experiment to actually pay people to have kids - i.e.: financially reward them in accordance with the costs involved. I suspect, as with an actual liveable UBI, the results would differ radically.
We do pay people to have kids in the USA - once you're on welfare. Your WIC and EBT allowances go up per kid.
And even if you're not that poor, you get subsidized kids through things like the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. It's annoying that while some of those support 3+ kids, many "top out" at three and stop increasing.
I've often thought of searching for "sponsorships" for additional children (though we'd probably have them anyway) - not sure I want my son to be named Facebook X AI though ;)
You've missed my point... Those allowances and subsidies don't remotely cover the cost of having children. Especially in the US with the wild costs of hospital childbirth itself.
David Brent is poisonous, and indeed hatable. The point of the British version of the show is not that he's more tolerable or likeable to the British. If anything it's more pointed how awful he is this side of the water, given the preponderance of bosses exactly like this. What makes the show work in the UK (and Ireland), is a greater cultural willingness to see the worst aspects of reality reflected in entertainment. Versus the focus on escapism in even the most grim US television - i.e.: Tony Soprano is a monster, but he also has charisma and glamour. Walter White is dying and becoming more and more amoral, but he also goes from being a dork to a badass. Both characters are utter glamorisations of what their real life counterparts would be like. Along with the surrealism there's a genuine existentialism to the darkest of UK comedy - from early Alan Partridge to Nighty Night. An actual interest in examining the nature of cruelty and suffering.
> i.e.: Tony Soprano is a monster, but he also has charisma and glamour. Walter White is dying and becoming more and more amoral, but he also goes from being a dork to a badass. Both characters are utter glamorisations of what their real life counterparts would be like.
I'm not actually disagreeing with you, but I wonder how you think you know this to be true?
Well for one, no real life mob overlord has a killer sound track and the best DOPs in the business making him look 'cool'. Real life violence doesn't cut away. Real life doesn't have moments of humours for the families of the murdered left behind etc etc.
I'm a filmmaker myself, and the nature of narrative television is to glamorise.
> no, there is no reasonable concern of this happening in the US in the near term
Non American here observing from outside. Given the move in a few months from a normative western society to one in which heavily armed masked men raid homes and businesses [1] to racially profile [2] for mass imprisonment and deportation. Given the current governments explicit redefinition of political opponents as terrorists [3]. And finally given the extent to which three letter agencies are integrated into US telecommunications infrastructure [4][5]. It seems delusional to discount the possibility of such blackouts in the US domestically.
>It seems delusional to discount the possibility of such blackouts in the US domestically.
I hear that, but we are so dependent on network connectivity for commerce (and entertainment) here that there would be riots from a different subset of the population if they turned that off.
You can harass brown people and murder activists here, but if you turn off the TikTok spigot, disable access to finance, or frankly fuckin' DoorDash or Uber, people are going to have a meltdown. Modern life here just grinds to a halt without data services.
I hear that, but we are so dependent on network connectivity for commerce (and entertainment) here that there would be riots from a different subset of the population if they turned that off.
You're thinking nationally. Think smaller.
It's not tremendously hard to imagine the internet being selectively shut down in a state or city.
Look at the events of the past week. Now imagine the Insurrection Act being invoked in Minnesota, and the state's internet is cut off as Governor Walz's helicopter flees to Canada to avoid being arrested.
If you can't imagine that, remember that nobody could imagine COVID lockdown, either. We've shut down the national air system twice in the last 25 years. Unimaginable in 1999. Yet, here we are.
I know the US is ludicrously expensive, but 3000 dollars for a cocktail party? Did you have a couple of hundred guests? The kind of party where you can lock in friendships, have meaningful conversations and personally play host tops out around 30 people. At those kind of numbers, you really don't need to hire a staff - you can provide canapés and make cocktails and or have a friend so at very reasonable cost. Source - I had hundreds of (often fairly raucous parties) at my old apartment. Alas I no longer live in a basement so my entertaining options are much more limited.
I was not looking to 'lock in life long friendships.' I was hosting a cocktail party as a favor for our school at my home and was obligated to ensure the overall experience was somewhat nicer than 'a wild party at an apartment' as fun as that is as well. These are somewhat normal things as part of a knit-community adult life. You have distant people come as well as close friends and open your home. That is ... hosting.
Partly what I was trying to point out is how 'adult life' gets complicated and expensive and most people are understandably just opting out. But at the same time, whats going out with it is just basic manners and social habits -- which is unfortunate.
My point stands - if anything a cocktail party is potentially less expensive to host since you know in advance numbers and preferences.
> These are somewhat normal things as part of a knit-community adult life.
As something of an adult myself (I'm 46), I'm well aware of how community functions. I'm also aware of the 'keeping up with the jones' nature of wealth and how corrosive that is to community - being entirely founded on the selective and exclusive nature of spending.
My contention stands, there is no need whatsoever to spend thousands on a cocktail party. One doesn't need to 'opt out' of social life. It's perfectly possible to serve cocktails yourself, to buy 'off the shelf' brands rather than expensive whiskey etc. It's perfectly possible to prepare your own food, or work with a chef who organises 'super club' style catering, which does not cost thousands.
It's a choice to live this way, not a fate. And doubtless it affords status among other high worth individuals - just as it dooms you to a life of fruitless comparison and ostentatiousness.
This can be said of literally anyone living in the first
World.
I find it deeply laughable anyone would stand on a soap box who lives in a modern first world environment and lecture like this while not seeing the irony that they do it themselves at their level as well.
Please. Stop. Look around. And maybe visit a place where you see how the other half of the planet lives. Likely your world is wildly ostentatious and unnecessary comparatively.
The plank in your eye before your neighbor and all that.
Retraining to what exactly? The middle class is being hollowed out globally - so reduced demand for the service economy. If we get effective humanoid robots (seems inevitable) and reliable AI (powered by armies of low payed workers filling in the gaps / taking over whenever the model fails), I'm not sure how much of an economy we could have for 'retraining' into. There are only so many onlyfans subscriptions / patronages an billionaire needs.
UBI effectively means welfare, with all the attendant social control (break the law lose your UBI, with law as ever expanding set of nuisances, speech limitations etc), material conditions (nowhere UBI has been implemented is it equivalent to a living wage) and self esteem issues. It's not any kind of solution.
Health care, elder care, child care are all chronically short of willing, able bodies.
Most people want to do anything but these three things - society is in many a ways a competition for who gets to avoid them. AI is a way of inexorably boxing people back into actually doing them.
Totally agree; these are all in need of bodies plus they are always understaffed (why the hell does a nurse need to oversee 15 patients in people have to rot in ICU for hours? We accept this because it's cost effective not because it's a decent or even safe practice).
Governments could and should make conditions in those professions more tolerable, and use money from A.I to retrain people into them.
If a teacher oversaw 10 kids instead of 35 maybe we'll have less burnout and maybe children get better education.
If had more police there would be less crime and less burnout.
Etc etc.
The thing is what happens untill (and if) we get into this utopia.
> Governments could and should make conditions in those professions more tolerable, and use money from A.I to retrain people into them.
FWIW, my vision was not really this utopian. It was more about AI smashing white-collar work as an alternative to these professions so that people are forced into them despite their preference to do pretty much anything else. Everyone is more bitter and resentful and feels less actualized and struggles to afford luxuries, but at least you don't have to wait that long in the emergency room and it's 10 kids to a classroom.
I don't think it's Utopia either (I was being a bit sarcastic) but it's the best case scenario; the worst case is governments do nothing and let "the market" run its course; this could be borderline Great Depression levels of depravity I think.
As for those professions; I think they are objectively hard for certain kinds of people but I think much of the problem is the working conditions; less shifts, less stress, more manpower and you'll see more satisfaction. There's really no reason why teachers in the U.S should be this burned out! In Scandinavia being a teacher is a honorable, high status profession. Much of this has to do with framing and societal prestige rather than the actual work itself.
If you pay elder carers more they'll be happier. We pretty treat our elders like a burden in most modern societies, in more traditional societies I'm assuming if you said your job is caring for elders it is not a low status gig.
Yea, the future is either UBI, or employing a very large number of people in public sector, doing jobs that are useful, but not necessary something free market capitalism values right now.
Either way, governments need to heavily tax corporations benefiting from AI to make it possible.
That's still an if and also a when; could be 2 decades from now or more till this reliably replaces a nurse.
> Retraining to what exactly?
I wish I had a good solution for all of us and you raise good points , even if you retrain to become say a therapist or a personal trainer the economy could become too broken and fragmented for you to be able to making a living. Governments that can will have to step in.
At a certain point people will break, and these sociopathic C-suites will be the first ones on the chopping block. Of course, that's why the biggest degenerates like Zucc are all off building doomsday bunkers, but I don't see a reality in which people put up with these types of conditions for long.
That said, it'll certainly get much, much worse before it starts getting better. I guess the best we can hope for is that the kids find a way out of the hell these psychos paved for us all.
People put up with what they have to put up with. Many millions of people have lived and suffered under totalitarian regimes with basically zero options to do anything about it. I think that's where we're headed and by the time a sufficient amount of people realise how bad their situation is, the moment to do anything about it will have long since passed. There will be no cavalry riding to the rescue this time.
This is exactly what Meredith Whittaker is saying... The 'edge conditions' outside the training data will never go away, and 'AGI' will for the foreseeable future simply mean millions in servitude teleoperating the robots, RLHFing the models or filling in the AI gaps in various ways.
Would be an interesting experiment to actually pay people to have kids - i.e.: financially reward them in accordance with the costs involved. I suspect, as with an actual liveable UBI, the results would differ radically.
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