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My comments had nothing to do with a minimum wage discussion, and I doubt SpaceX employs people for even near to minimum wage. This is a company that creates ra

My comments had nothing to do with a minimum wage discussion, and I doubt SpaceX employs people for even near to minimum wage. This is a company that creates rather high wage jobs. It is also doing very risky things. If the USA had stricter rules about employment protection and all that came with it, Spacex would not exist at all, and the 90% of well paid employees that remain wouldn’t have gotten these jobs. The ability for companies to take big risks is what pushes the economy forward so that we can all have better lives for a reduced cost, and better jobs too. To “protect” jobs you would hold us all back, we’d still all be working on farms or in factories instead of on computers, increasingly from home. Is that what you want? Why are people rioting in France? Maybe because they feel poorer than their parents. Their laws protecting jobs have removed opportunity from everyone in order to provide stability for some.

akiselev 8y ago
France is rioting because those protections allow them to not because they are slowing down economic growth. France has a culture of rioting and civil disobedience in part because those protections give people enough breathing room to be involved in politics. Have you ever been to Alabama? Mississippi? Florida outside of the metro areas? They're equivalent to third world countries with infrastructure held together by duct tape and spit. Every time I drive through those states, I feel like I'm in some edgy anarchist's student film about late stage capitalism. Those areas should have been rioting for decades now but US economics is set up in such a way as to deprive the constituency from any practical way of getting involved.
- kire_says 8y ago
  > They're equivalent to third world countries with infrastructure held together by duct tape and spit This is deeply hyperbolic.
- aristophenes 8y ago
  Yea, I used to live in central, rural Florida for a few years. It's rural. Farms and ranches. They have a lot of land to cover, a hot and humid climate that eats anything left alone for too long, and not a high density of expendable cash because it's various types of farming which has almost always been low margin. So the roads are going to not be great. But people were as fat and happy there as anywhere else. Spanish moss makes everything look dilapidated, it grows on everything including power lines. Sure it's poor compared to many other places, but I've also been to third world countries, and they are certainly not that. Not even close. So yea, the poorest areas of the USA are still not too bad, I think that says something.

akiselev 8y ago

France is rioting because those protections allow them to not because they are slowing down economic growth. France has a culture of rioting and civil disobedience in part because those protections give people enough breathing room to be involved in politics. Have you ever been to Alabama? Mississippi? Florida outside of the metro areas? They're equivalent to third world countries with infrastructure held together by duct tape and spit. Every time I drive through those states, I feel like I'm in some edgy anarchist's student film about late stage capitalism. Those areas should have been rioting for decades now but US economics is set up in such a way as to deprive the constituency from any practical way of getting involved.

kire_says 8y ago
> They're equivalent to third world countries with infrastructure held together by duct tape and spit This is deeply hyperbolic.
aristophenes 8y ago
Yea, I used to live in central, rural Florida for a few years. It's rural. Farms and ranches. They have a lot of land to cover, a hot and humid climate that eats anything left alone for too long, and not a high density of expendable cash because it's various types of farming which has almost always been low margin. So the roads are going to not be great. But people were as fat and happy there as anywhere else. Spanish moss makes everything look dilapidated, it grows on everything including power lines. Sure it's poor compared to many other places, but I've also been to third world countries, and they are certainly not that. Not even close. So yea, the poorest areas of the USA are still not too bad, I think that says something.