[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

5 minutes ago, Tarina Sewell said:

I found nothing humorous about your statement. I saw you insulting people who have honest working jobs who go to work everyday so people like you can come in buy the toilet paper and spit on them for doing work you feel is beneath you.

The only part meant to be humorous was the skynet part.  If you find the truth insulting, I suggest you spend all your time in-world, where you can be insulated from it.  I have never "spit on" someone who is doing work, but that doesn't mean it's not true that those jobs are easily replaced.  Since I spent the first 12 years of my career in fast food, it's hard to see how I feel such work is "beneath me".  You can shove off with your self righteous outrage, I'm not impressed.

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

 

3 minutes ago, Tarina Sewell said:

 You live in your own little world, don't you?

I'm sorry, were you trying to make a point, or just being snarky?  Other than the humorous sci fi reference, I believe everything I said is accurate and topical.

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

25 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

A lot

"Essential jobs" and "essential workers" are bad misnomers.  It is the FUNCTIONS that are "essential".  A grocery store cannot operate without a means of checkout and receiving payment.  Generally, that's someone making minimum wage or slightly over doing so manually.  Why?  Because it's such a basic, simple task that pretty much any high school graduate can do it, (thus, competition keeps the price of this labor down), while current financial analysis and customer sentiment keeps the stores from automating the jobs away (which can clearly be done).  There is nothing particularly essential about some hominid doing that work or filling that job, and Covid will likely cause shoppers to be more amenable to automated checkout and businesses to look more closely at the financial analysis.  Within 5 years, you may well see the vast majority of those jobs go the way of counter personnel at fast food places - machines performing the function, with one person standing around for things the machines cannot anticipate or handle.  Similarly, you're almost certain to see a greater push for drone delivery after this, and Amazon further automating their distribution hubs, as people deciding to strike at times like this tends to make companies hedge their bets in the future.

As far as the "maverick economists", those sorts of conjectures have been floated around since the dawn of the industrial age.  We keep creating technology to automated whole jobs away, and end up creating new jobs for those workers (albeit usually after significant disruption).  At the end of the day, the only really "essential" jobs are knowledge workers, such as those who design and fix the robots.  Until SkyNet takes over, anyway.  Then we're all just meat puppets awaiting our orderly disposal.

[Second Life job ad]

22 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Just to clarify as I might not have been clear. Whilst anti-discrimination laws exist and are given federally of which these cant be altered or changed by states (i.e. conflicting laws) as I mentioned in my earlier post, we do have state 'anti-discriminative acts', however these are actually called (or are implied as such) equal opportunity laws. 99% of these acts just follow or reinforce the federal ones (overlap) though both still need to be adhered to if one adds something different on a state level (i.e. if the state operates a different institution or office they would be included in the state act due to them being different). The reason for this is so that there is an insurance that all aspects are covered (per before mentioned different institution names etc) and also due to each state having its own state commissions.

This also allows for multiple tiers of avenues a person can take just like courts. If you aren't happy with the state ruling you can take it the federal Commission or go straight there.

Like the USA, Australia is similar in that it is a commonwealth and whilst it is federated under the constitution (federal anti-discrimination laws come from this), each state still has its own courts, laws, jurisdictions etc. Just in discrimination, the laws always operate alongside, never conflict and never can be changed on a city level. This is why generally the state laws are the same as the federal and just overlap.

That said the anti-discrimination laws are separate and complimentary to the employment laws. Employment laws are covered by the federal government under fairwork for 95% of employees and states don't have their own employment laws other than specific fairwork acts for state government employees (the remaining 5%).

Hope that clarifies it a little.

Thanks - I love posts that are educational and informative.  Now if only I can manage to get our Australian operations back under my growing HR empire...

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

1 minute ago, Beth Macbain said:

This stupid, stupid bickering about how many young people have died from COVID is pointless. 

 

Filling in for Scylla today, we have Beth Macbain.  Back to your corners, everyone.  Let's go, move it!

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

8 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

While it is not true, as Luna stated, that "many young people are dying" from COVID-19, there was at least one death in the 1-4 age group and 4 in the 15-24 age group (though I can't yet find any breakdown of that 15-24 age group).  https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm

¹Deaths with confirmed or presumed COVID-19, coded to ICD–10 code U07.1.

 

The data I looked at was likelihood of dying, and it said 0%.  Perhaps they round "almost 0%" down to "0%".  I sit corrected, although as you point out, it;s still a tiny fraction.

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

25 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

The Instacart delivery person who delivered my groceries is "fake news and information"?  The grocery checkout person at Walmart or the food delivery people are not real? The postal carrier who puts mail in my slot doesn't exist?   I could go on and on...carers for those in nursing homes, for example.

Really, all those people have died?  I don't think anyone is disputing that a lot of front line workers are still working, albeit several million fewer are today than were a few weeks ago, but you seem to be implying that the proleteriat is dying en masse just so we greedy, evil capitalists can go on eating caviar and raping peasant girls.  Or is it raping caviar and eating peasant girls, I get my Bolshevik propaganda confused sometimes.

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

5 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

How many low-wage workers are dying though really isn't the issue.  Experiencing Covid-19 is no piece of cake -- it's miserable. They are providing a service for the rest of us who can easily work at home, or have money saved for a rainy day. We should honor them and not disparage them, accusing them of taking things they should not via whatever unemployment money might be coming for some.

You really enjoy accusing me of things I didn't do or say.  I'm not disparaging someone when I say they can take advantage of an ill-conceived knee-jerk piece of legislation and stay home rather than work.  It's the logical thing for them to do.  I am disparaging the idiots who wrote the bill and the fools who passed it anyway after they were warned.  I am also saying that business will undoubtedly factor in new risks and costs when deciding whether to automate those jobs away, because it's the logical thing for them to do.

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

1 minute ago, Luna Bliss said:

So my local news, airing stories of young who have died, with their online funerals and facebook postings, family members interviewed, is all fake. I guess I better wait till I see it in a governmental document to believe it. I see.

If that is true, then maybe you should be asking why your local health officials aren't reporting these deaths to the CDC.  Of course, I'm not sure if you're American, so perhaps in whatever country you call home it's different.  Personally, I believe very little that comes off farcebook or broadcast news unless I verify it with more trustworthy sources.  And, yes, I'm more apt to believe what the CDC publishes than anecdotal stories about what someone says they saw on the news, especially since, are you sure those "young who have died" are under 20?  After all, from 20-55 the death rate of Covid is comparable to that of the annual flu, at 0.1%, so there are certainly a small number of people in their 20's for the media to exploit to excite hysteria.

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

7 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

From your past posts related to your frustration with the workers you employ in your business, berating them frequently, I get the impression your views are colored by these experiences. It's not good to extrapolate your personal experiences to the world at large.

And many young people ARE dying. 

I've actually said positive things about my employees, I don't recall saying anything negative about mine.  As far as "many young people ARE dying", as of this morning, according to the CDC, not a single person under 20 has died of Covid in the US.  You should stop listening to media fanning fear and rely on actual data.

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

2 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Most low-skilled/low-wage workers are out there working and dying for those who feel entitled, like you, in disproportionate numbers, not going on unemployment:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/10/new-york-coronavirus-inequality-divide-two-cities

Nice ad hominem.  The Guardian reporter, and you, may wish to stop and consider that the new regs were just passed, and most people do not yet realize that, say, if they have kids they can simply claim they have to stay home and not work because the kids aren't in school, and collect the equivalent of $15/hr.

And, please, knock it off with the histrionic "working and dying" crap.  The vast majority of fatalities are in retired people and those who are likely not working due to preexisting health conditions.  Working age and otherwise healthy adults have under a 1% chance of dying from Covid, if they catch it. 

 

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

6 hours ago, Gadget Portal said:

 If anything, those non essential, greedy types will just find new and interesting ways to make sure they stay rich while everyone else suffers through the next one just like they're doing with this one. 

I wouldn't doubt that this  extended shutting down of much of the economy, coupled with a likely coming boom of many of those "essential workers" opting to go on unemployment rather than going to work, will result in a whole wave of new automation, resulting in machines doing that work instead of people.  Maybe a total of 1 person to handle the entire checkout section of grocery stores.  More fully-automated warehousing, especially in food industries.  Businesses have very few "essential workers" - mostly they have "essential functions", and going through an extended period where your business is in jeopardy definitely tilts the playing field more towards automation instead of labor, even more than the drive to artificially increase wages for unskilled jobs has.

[Second Life job ad]

3 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Ah I see. Little different in Australia. All of our laws involving such issues are given at the federal level such as the anti-discrimination law (covers all groups and individuals) and state governments cant override those or attach other addendums to those laws. We also have an independent body that is mandated and supported by the federal government that fights for the worker called 'Fairwork' of which they also are responsible for increasing our minimum wage and in cases representing workers rights etc and representing them in court. This body is separate from the unions and covers those that aren't in a union though you can also be part of a union. This body is the enforcement along with the courts.

We also don't have such things called affirmative actions. Perhaps this is why we don't see those clauses at the end of job adverts and just hire based on skill as in general whilst people still need to prove discrimination fair work helps them do that freely and the fines and penalties are not low if they are proven to have infringed on the law.

Affirmative action is somewhat misunderstood.  There are not really "quotas" - you can be in compliance and substantially under-represented in minorities and women.  You just have to be taking "good faith actions" to try and increase representation.  It's really just a circle jerk that makes politicians feel good, keeps bureaucrats employed, and creates a multi-billion dollar industry of compliance software, consulting, and training. 

I've generally found other countries take a better approach to employment law than the US.  For instance, I'd give up a testicle if we'd prohibit states and cities from making their own employment laws, the way the Aussies have, and even when other countries have rules Americans employers would normally find troublesome, at least they are straightforward and easy to comply with or predict.

[Second Life job ad]

9 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

This has got me curious. Does America have an anti discrimination law that states that an employer can not discriminate from these kind of things? Just find it interesting that over in Australia we don't need such clauses in Job adverts as we just hire the best suited. Though I am sure there are a few that do discriminate over here, the laws in place allow the potential candidate to then claim discrimination and have the business fined etc.

As is usual in the US, our laws overlap, sometimes conflict, and are better suited to making trial lawyers wealthy than to legislating good behavior.  At a federal level, employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, union participation, age, military history, pregnancy, or disability.  Many states have similar laws that broaden protection to other groups (most, for instance, protect LGBTQ status).  Even a few cities get in on the act.

The diversity clauses originally were mandated for government contractors to comply with affirmative action requirements, which are imposed on companies that want to do business with the government.  In some markets and some industries, companies have begun using them to signal that they are modern and progressive, particularly in terms of LGBTQ (which is not covered under affirmative action).

You have similar laws in Australia, although I'm not versed on enforcement there.

[Make Us Laugh!]

1 minute ago, Beth Macbain said:

That's true... so why does he continue to lie about the existence of the pee tape? 

I'm not convinced it actually exists, but it makes me happy to think it does...

Maybe Melania is bad at watersports?

[Make Us Laugh!]

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Well, there WERE all those rumors about Donald T. and the Moscow Hotel Room...

that was hookers, and there is nothing dishonorable about paying a beautiful Russian hooker ti give you a golden shower.

[Make Us Laugh!]

7 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Hey! Give credit where credit is due. I posted it first! 

You did indeed.  But I'm a bit drunk right now

 

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

5 minutes ago, Shansi Kenin said:

My concern in a post covid-19 world, HCWD will be like made cow disease/crutchfield jacobsen disease but will get spread at some point considering its incubation time as a STD.

Chronic Wasting Disease has been confirmed to have jumped from deer to birds in north America, in next several years as cats catch birds they will be infected, soon spreading to family dogs then humans. the disease has 100% fatality rate, it cannot be cured, it is not a virus or bacteria, it can survive 1000 degree fire, radiation and infected droppings in the soil can remain active for up to 20 years. HCWD is the disease blowing up right in our own backyard but 100% ignored in a post covid-19 world until it's too late.

 

 

Well, you have now convinced me to kill the feral cats I feed.  Poor Mittens, he's such a sweetheart.

[Make Us Laugh!]

This made me laugh and laugh...

[What does a post covid-19 world look like to you?]

People get over things really quickly.  I doubt the world will look much different in 2022 than it did in 2019.  Unless, of course, we have a Depression and I use it to seize unlimited power.  Then I guarantee it will look a LOT different!

[Post 1000 Revelation....]

1,000?  you're practically a virgin.

[Second Life job ad]

2 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

Those are all on the secret Google for Women site.

That is indeed Perfect.

The worst thing the feminist movement did is get men to cook for themselves.  Give us good nookie and cookies, and there's pretty much nothing we won't do in return.  Move boxes, shovel snow, overthrow a government, it's all good as long as everything between sternum and thighs is happy.  We're such simple and useful creatures.

[Second Life job ad]

21 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

And clearly the men don't know how to use Google, either.

I found that one - I just have higher standards than you do 😛

Besides, I said "men", that is only 1.  I was thinking something along the lines of the Master of Puppets album cover, but with men instead of tombstones, maybe with well manicured nails on the fingers...

 

[Second Life job ad]

25 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Clive doesn't like women and thus that question is totally irrelevant to him.

Or, I guess I should reword that -- Clive thinks that women are inferior.  

Pfft women are clearly the superior sex.  Physically weaker (on average), they still manage to run the world by running the men, and letting the men think they run things.

I was surprised how hard it is to find an image of a woman with men on puppet strings.  Clearly the women at Google have purged the internet of such divisive images, so as to keep men from learning the truth...

[Second Life job ad]

18 minutes ago, clivesteel said:

Except very concerning that there is no mention of diversity or equity. 

May I ask LL: how many people of color or the LGBTQ+ community do you currently employ...?

 

As LL is unlikely to be an affirmative action employer (to the best of my knowledge, they have no government contracts) they would not be required to include the "qualified minorities and women are encouraged to apply" bit.  Also, asking LL the number of people of color employed is rather pointless if you do not have data regarding the diversity of the qualified labor pool in the relevant labor market (which this ad doesn't even state), or the size of of the workforce.  Having 10 out of 1000 minority employees in Vermont would be better "diversity performance" than 10 out of 100 in Atlanta.

I notice you did not ask how many women they employ.  The same "concern" you raise could easily be raised about your question's lack of inquiry into the number of female employees, particularly given the often-noted lack of women in technology fields.

Finally, given that there is no government requirement to solicit sexual orientation information from a workforce and report on it, it would be very concerning indeed if LL could give you an accurate, specific answer to the LGBTQ portion.  Soliciting information that is related to protected class/status from applicants or employees, when not required by law to do so, is a wonderful way to solicit lawsuits.  Don't believe me?  Try asking an candidate who appears to be over 40 when they graduated college, and get back to me when your ADEA lawsuit settles.