Political Discussion

A Dad Took Naked Photos of His Toddler for the Doctor, Google Flagged Him as a Criminal - NY Times

He lost his accounts, phone number and more and was reported to the police who opened an investigation.

The police found no wrongdoing. Google does not agree and will not reinstate his accounts.

AI's are watching you and everything you do. And something as simple as a doctor asking for pictures to diagnose a condition on a virtual appointment could be flagged. Two of which cases are mentioned in this article.

Google stands by their Zero Tolerance policy and any such pictures on your Google Device / Cloud / Sent through their platforms is a "server violation of their terms and conditions" whether the nation of the content was innocent or not. So far any attempts to appeal the suspension of accounts has resulted in the appeals being denied with no explanation given.
 

MSN

www.msn.com


I really hope this doesn't come to fruition but all signs are pointing that many companies will go this direction. Right now employees hold more power than they have in years because of inflation and a tight job market. But if a recession hits, that power will diminish. And pay cuts for remote workers could become the new norm as companies look for cheaper labor to boost profits.
 
RenegadeMonster said:

MSN

www.msn.com


I really hope this doesn't come to fruition but all signs are pointing that many companies will go this direction. Right now employees hold more power than they have in years because of inflation and a tight job market. But if a recession hits, that power will diminish. And pay cuts for remote workers could become the new norm as companies look for cheaper labor to boost profits.
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Short sighted gotta be short sighted. My wife’s company is anything but the best in the world, but when they realized they actually got more work out of the folks who were working from home, they started renting out their big office building.

Her company also realized she was doing too much and kept on the person who filled in for her while she was on maternity leave to report directly to her.
 
Because a lot of companies look at working from home as a "benefit", and many companies who want their employees back in the office for no other reason than control or "that's the way it's always been" when the job can be done at home get pushback from employees when they are told to return to office, they dangle stuff like 20% salary cuts for the benefit to work from home hoping employees will bite.
 
I suspect the pay cut will manifest itself in less obvious ways for most companies than outright saying "you work from your home office, so take 20% less or get out". That's a formula to lose any talent you have that values WAH to competitors who won't do that. However, I would probably expect that companies who are looking to do that will do some or all of the following:
  • Implement location based salary schemes (market based is the term my employer uses) that allow them to professionally justify paying 100k to the Strategic Account Executive in NY but 70k to the Strategic Account Executive in Arkansas.
  • Differentiate initial job offers by region for the same position (no different than any other qualifier that companies may currently use to evaluate offers) and/or target lower CoL markets for roles that can bear the load.
  • Halt raises and/or limit raises on promotions for employees in remote markets compared to their in office counterparts (to bring those numbers farther apart to what they want)
  • Use WFH as a lower-level carrot to encourage employees to stay at the company at lower than market rates
I think the bigger issue with the idea is the spectrum of employees. My anecdotal experience is that the biggest gains for in office work to a company are made with younger employees and employees who are employed for their presence and mechanical actions- those who spend less time in Zoom meetings and more time doing rote, operational work that may require a more immediate feedback loop. Also those who may be a little rougher around the edges that can be rounded off without issue in person. However, those employees often are going to feel the pinch of a reduction of WFH allowance and/or a salary reduction more than the white collar workers in Zoom City. Like, a company reduces the salary of a white collar worker from 200k to 160k to stay at home, that employee is likely angry and may leave but can make that work in the short term. If you reduce an entry level employee or essential "cog" if you will from 50k to 40k or cause them to return to the office, that may make day to day life an impossibility - no one to take care of the kids, being unable to afford the lowest rental option or the transport costs to work, etc.

This does kind of align with the larger argument though. It's hard to imagine the argument a company can present to an employee as to why the employer gets to clawback the employee-side savings from work at home. Similar to how it's hard to imagine the cogent argument a company can make for why employees who are working productively remotely need to come back into the office at their cost. Hypothetically work at home should benefit all parties - employees are now footing the utilities and workspace in exchange for no transport costs while employers get to reduce their physical footprint and costs. Taking back money is basically saying "you're only x% as valuable of an employee" from home and, if you can't back that up, no one's gonna stand for it. C.R.E.A.M and all.
 
Here’s the other thing. A living functioning city has lots of people living in the city centre. We’re awful that in Ireland, and they are in the uk too. An increase of WFH, particularly in office jobs, means less offices so more space for urban living and so a more vibrant and thriving city centre!

An undercurrent in the government sector is huge state owned office blocks not being left empty. We’re being driven back by senior civil servants not wanting to make ministers look foolish by their big vanity office blocks attracting negative press for being white elephants.
 
www.cnn.com

Ohio teachers say they won't end their strike without improvements to miserable classroom environment | CNN

The day before classes are scheduled to start, teachers in Ohio's largest school system say they won't end their strike without improvements to what they describe as dilapidated schools where a lack of heating and air conditioning has led to miserable classroom environments.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

Teachers on strike due to lack of air conditioning in classrooms leading to miserable classroom conditions this time of year when temperatures can still break 100 degrees.

It sounds awful. But I don't know if the strike will actually get anything done. Simply put, there is no money to address these concerns. The local school board / district isn't going to be able to make meaningful change. It needs to happen at the State and Federal level.

With climate change, extreme heat and aging schools this is likely going to become an issue that gets more and more attention this decade.
 
Latest headlines on student loans is Biden is expected to announce one final pause on student loan payments to after the midterm elections.

In additional to one last pause, it is expected he will forgive up to $10,000 of student loan debt per borrower. Recipients of PELL grants may receive an additional forgiveness of up to $20,000.

$10,000 helps be little to none, and probably only hurts the chances of a larger forgiveness later on.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Latest headlines on student loans is Biden is expected to announce one final pause on student loan payments to after the midterm elections.

In additional to one last pause, it is expected he will forgive up to $10,000 of student loan debt per borrower. Recipients of PELL grants may receive an additional forgiveness of up to $20,000.

$10,000 helps be little to none, and probably only hurts the chances of a larger forgiveness later on.
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Not to mention the keyword “federal.” I know it’s a meager break, but I ain’t getting it.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Latest headlines on student loans is Biden is expected to announce one final pause on student loan payments to after the midterm elections.

In additional to one last pause, it is expected he will forgive up to $10,000 of student loan debt per borrower. Recipients of PELL grants may receive an additional forgiveness of up to $20,000.

$10,000 helps be little to none, and probably only hurts the chances of a larger forgiveness later on.
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I'm not gonna get upset that they're actually doing a break given I thought they wouldn't. 10k is what was campaigned on by Biden IIRC, and while there are plenty of valid concerns around the limitations, amount, and types of loans it applies to, for a lot of folks that's 10k less gaining interest and a lessened burden. The 20k for those who received Pell Grants is a nice touch given that feels like it'll correlate with lower income families going in.

Not my ideal structure by any means (I was a bigger fan of targeting interest and a relief mechanism probably combined with allocating relief as a percentage of overall debt as opposed to a flat figure) but it'll help a lot of people.

For me, I think I'll only get a thousand and change forgiven, so not a big horse in the game on my side, but as I said I assumed this would be punted or never addressed so I'm happy there's something.
 
I think my wife's new job combined with my income may creep us just past the cut-off. I don't have any debt, but my wife went to Art School...
 
epyon415 said:
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This seems like an administrative nightmare. What gives with the means testing? We really need to step away from means testing this given that hiring people and creating systems to means test everyone is going to cost more than the actual loan forgiveness. I guess there's another contract for Deloitte here...(If you aren't familiar with Deloitte, see how well they did with the vaccine data system: What went wrong with America’s $44 million vaccine data system?)
 
One of my concerns is the student loan forgiveness is almost guaranteed to be challenged and go to the SCOTUS. And if it does, based on a ruling earlier this year, it is all but certain they will say the executive branch / the department of education does not have the constitutional power to do so. Only congress does.

So we could end up with a real shit show.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
One of my concerns is the student loan forgiveness is almost guaranteed to be challenged and go to the SCOTUS. And if it does, based on a ruling earlier this year, it is all but certain they will say the executive branch / the department of education does not have the constitutional power to do so. Only congress does.

So we could end up with a real shit show.
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I think you are absolutely right unfortunately.
 
I am assuming means testing is a political call. Polling on the topic in very broad strokes is pretty supportive of some degree of loan forgiveness but that support dries up a lot without means testing. This is a baldly political decision (IMO) by Biden here so I'm not surprised he's aiming for that.

I am wondering what the angle taken on an SC challenge would be. The federal government guaranteed the loans for ages, went direct in the 90s, and there is a long history of loan forgiveness. In 2019 Donald Trump forgave all student loan debt for disabled veterans via an EO using the same law that Biden is likely using to support this EO. There has also been various over loan forgiveness EOs, mostly to students who went to for-profit or fraudulent schools. This isn't to say a lawsuit won't come and it won't reach SCOTUS, but the cat may be out of the bag and there is precedent to this - just not at the scale Biden is doing it.
 
waruv said:
I am assuming means testing is a political call. Polling on the topic in very broad strokes is pretty supportive of some degree of loan forgiveness but that support dries up a lot without means testing. This is a baldly political decision (IMO) by Biden here so I'm not surprised he's aiming for that.

I am wondering what the angle taken on an SC challenge would be. The federal government guaranteed the loans for ages, went direct in the 90s, and there is a long history of loan forgiveness. In 2019 Donald Trump forgave all student loan debt for disabled veterans via an EO using the same law that Biden is likely using to support this EO. There has also been various over loan forgiveness EOs, mostly to students who went to for-profit or fraudulent schools. This isn't to say a lawsuit won't come and it won't reach SCOTUS, but the cat may be out of the bag and there is precedent to this - just not at the scale Biden is doing it.
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Yes, this has been done before.

But the current SCOTUS set a major presidence earlier this year, if I remember correctly it was with the EPA. That the EPA / Biden Administration did not have the constitutional authority to create new regulation, only congress does. And that their opinion on the ruling, when read to the T, could apply to any action the Department of Education / the Biden Administration takes on student loans.
 
I think the argument would differ here in that there is existing legislation to support wide federal powers on the topic (Higher Education Act allows the Government through the Sec of Education to adjust loan principal due) - so it's not new regulation, just newly used enforcement of existing regulation. Again, doesn't mean this SCOTUS won't pull something out of their ass if it gets there, just that it's a different case.
 
waruv said:
I am assuming means testing is a political call. Polling on the topic in very broad strokes is pretty supportive of some degree of loan forgiveness but that support dries up a lot without means testing. This is a baldly political decision (IMO) by Biden here so I'm not surprised he's aiming for that.
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Means testing is part of the neoliberal order. It's designed to dole out contractor dollars, create unnecessary bureaucracy, and make a system that is difficult to navigate in hopes that people that actually do qualify cannot access the money they were promised due to "bugs" in the system. It's a good way to create jobs for political allies and give out money to companies, without giving out money to actual people that the money is supposed to help. Most means testing for government programs should be done away with because it is usually just a large waste of money. For instance, very few people think that those individuals making over $125K/year should be barred from the library, but that's a completely publicly funded entity.

Also, I do not make over $125K/year nor do I owe student loans anymore, and I think it's stupid for us to means test in order for people to get this money.
 
nolalady said:
Means testing is part of the neoliberal order. It's designed to dole out contractor dollars, create unnecessary bureaucracy, and make a system that is difficult to navigate in hopes that people that actually do qualify cannot access the money they were promised due to "bugs" in the system. It's a good way to create jobs for political allies and give out money to companies, without giving out money to actual people that the money is supposed to help. Most means testing for government programs should be done away with because it is usually just a large waste of money. For instance, very few people think that those individuals making over $125K/year should be barred from the library, but that's a completely publicly funded entity.

Also, I do not make over $125K/year nor do I owe student loans anymore, and I think it's stupid for us to means test in order for people to get this money.
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I'm not disagreeing that I think it's inefficient and a poor use of money. I'm just explaining why I think it's there - two thirds of Americans think loan forgiveness should happen but half of those people think it should be need based as opposed to all loans. I say this as someone who barely has any student debt and makes under 125k a year and, similarly, doesn't have a notable dog in this hunt.
 
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