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[Flying Dice]

The military does employ a lot of people, but for the most part provides no real benefits besides employment (and going off to fight wars in other countries with no real gain politically or economically to America), whereas the same amount of money put into infrastructure would both create jobs, and help our failing infrastructure, something that is of long term help to the country and is desperately needed.

I agree that infrastructure is very important, but research in military usually get used for a less deadly purpose later, same as research in NASA lead to a lot of thing we used to day.

All in all, if the point is to create more jobs, there's better ways.

The thing is, a lot of military spending is neither employing large numbers of people or developing technology that has civilian applications, it is rather devoted to making new things to kill people with. Radar is a well-known, reasonable example of the way that military development can lead to useful non-military applications; fuel-air bombs (AFAIK; I bothered to google it for a few minutes and all that turned up were reports of them being used on civilian populations, which surprises me not in the least.) are not. For that matter, if we decided to have one less directionless bush war, we could probably fund public works projects on a large scale with the debt that would have paid for us to kill a bunch of people in the third world that may or may not have been marginally dangerous.

 

[malimbar04]

I'm not really sure what 'minimum barriers to be useful to society' means. To me, anybody who isn't living out in the wilderness as a hermit is contributing to society one way or another. Even a bum that turns in 5$ of aluminum cans a day and spends it on malt liquor is contributing to the economy and to society.

Montague
- I'm not sure how else to phrase my meaning to be more accurate, because you're right that a bum could still be a contributing member of a society with $5 a day in aluminum can money. However, if the bum wants to have more then that $5 a day, or some other bum already monopolized the collecting-aluminum-cans business, then our bum is stuck. If that bum wants to contribute more to society (top contributers can theoretically profit the most), then he has to find a different business altogether. He is then limited by the requirements of that business. If he wants the lifestyle that McDonalds employees have, then he has to be able to get that type of job. That can be difficult if you look, smell like, act like, and generally are... a bum. So there are different levels of contributing to our financial system, with barriers to move from one to another. These barriers are the minimum that I'm talking about.

Also, consider the other financial costs of having bums. I assume it's not the easiest to live on $5 of aluminum can money on an average night. Thus there are the costs of programs to help these people - shelters for them to sleep in, food for them to eat, blankets to help them keep warm, and so forth. Every year around christmas time there are tons of charities asking for donations for exactly these reasons. Their $5 a day of spent aluminum can money isn't enough to compensate for the general loss taken to the system to support their minimum needs.

And that's just for the obvious bums. What about people living in their parents houses because they can't find a job, or people who don't make enough to pay their student loans, or people who bought houses that forced them to go bankrupt. When the scales are balanced out and they come out poorer than the bums, it's technically a financial drain. The levels that make people unable to support what should otherwise be stable lifestyles - those levels are what I'm talking about. They require a minimum set of conditions to be met. And if we identify all those conditions, then it's just an engineering problem to make it easier to jump through those conditions, thus improving society.

That's the idea anyways- I hope it's clear.

[Montague]

So the minimum stuff you need to contribute to society?

A person with a very marginal income can function on their own. A person can hold a full time job and be intentionally homeless, or live out of their car, truckbed, rv trailer, ect. Living reasonably well like that can cost around $6,000/ year, something a person can earn working an average of 3 hours a week at minimum wage. Although this sort of thing is "dropping out of the system" to some extent and is almost illegal and requires a lot of lying to get by, but at a minimum, its supporting yourself, contributing to the economy, even paying whatever taxes you'd pay living like that. It's basically what this dude did http://guide2homelessness.blogspot.com/ and I was impressed on how he did so well doing it.

Of course, that dude went through a lot of effort to present himself as very square and mainstream to get a job, despite living in his car for several years on end.

So, I'd suppose that way of living is about the minimum for a single lone person. Although, I'd suppose that living in a car or cargo trailer isn't exactly "stable" nor can you really raise a family or do other such luxurious things, but for a couple or a single person, it's doable and not at all difficult to achieve.

 People get themselves in trouble simply when they decide to live beyond their means. They get a mortgage on an overvalued mcmansion, lease an expensive SUV, run through credit cards and skim by on the merit of having a paycheck all because they want to live the techno-bling lifestyle they see people on TV having. When all they are doing is sabotaging themselves and ultimately, the economy and society. I don't feel sorry for these types of people at all, because they should have understood the risks and tried to level their ambitions to their means. I'd probably blame these people for the recession and the massive problems it has created for everyone effected before I'd blame the "1%er elites.

I'd almost suggest a commune or somesuch arrangement where food, lodging and work are ensured, although I don't think these places accept just anybody and there are plenty of rules and restrictions as such.

One thing I really believe in, is educating people about how shit works in the real world during highschool and making it a primary focus. Nobody graduating high school really understands how leases, mortgages, interest, bank products or currency work. Let alone how to maintain their own vehicles, get a job, negotiate a raise, raise kids, sue and be sued and a million other life skills people are expected to know and are never taught. Instead they get some rudimentary classic academics aimed at preparing them for college and are thrust out expecting to do something besides go fail miserably and move back in with their parents.

[malimbar04]

Montague
- Thanks for another thought-out reply! I also like your link, and am slowly reading it. It brings up some interesting things that I hadn't thought of. By scraping as low as this guy, you have to be comfortable lying, you have to have the skills required to get a job, you have to be willing to eat off $1 a day, you have to have a mood that's impervious to the social condition you're in.

I'm still not sure if we're on the same page with the word "minimum" though. By analogy, that's like saying the minimum requirements of a useful computer program is 170k of storage - and any more than that is a luxery. After all, SpinRite comes on that, and includes it's own operating system! People who want to use more than that are just living the high life.

The minimum I'm talking about is not a point, but more like a line. If you want X, you must have at LEAST Y. Sure, you could push down the requirements of X until Y is pretty close to 0, but that doesn't help us lower the line at all.