The problem is loopholes, but I'm not a tax lawyer, which is why I provi such a vague answer.

I think that ostentatious wealth is a sign you're not doing your share to help the society that supports you, so the disgustingly rich shouldn't exist. But I'm not opposed to a little inequality as reward for doing important work or going above and beyond, but what we have now is crazy.

I wouldn't really say that California's tax is especially progressive compared to taxes in the past, like the golden age of the USA. But even then, lobbyists have opened so many loopholes that it doesn't even really matter what the tax rate is

I don't know because I think if people got paid fair wages the world would look very different, and the cost of living calculations we currently use to determine fair wages would change in ways I can't predict.

I think that with aggressive progressive taxes, we'd see the range of incomes get compressed, and lift lower incomes. I'm not entirely sure how that'd affect cost of living, it'd probably go up, but wages would go up more.

But if I had to guess, if say everyone should be making between $100k and $300k, and I should probably be somewhere in the middle of that.

House fire.

(That's a lie, I'm not and I live in an apartment, but I plan on prepping for it)

👎 weaksauce

That's bad potential. Replacing workers is bad. It's not good for society or the real economy. So again, why frame it positively?

Why bother tell people who are complaining that what they're complaining about is inevitable?
I guess you can complain about the inevitable complaining about an inevitable bad thing. But that's a weird thing to do, without an ulterior motive.

How am I supposed to read

Could be so much potential there

If not positively, even when qualified by "if it delivers"?
you're saying that delivering will provide lots of potential. Unless you're saying that the potential youre talking about is potential harm, in which case I agree but that's a strange way to phrase it.

Right from the start of this thread you were justifying it saying that it's fine for it to displace workers because the workers being displaced were not doing work of value. When I laid out why it's still a bad thing, you switched arguments to "it's inevitable so there is no point complain".
Which is a strange take, because it's totally normal to complain and air grievances about inevitable things that you don't like. You seem really committed telling people to stop complaining about AI. It's weird

Luddites were against automated looms because they thought it'd destroy the careers in the industry.
They were right, it's just that working a loom was a small enough part of the economy that it didn't really matter.
AI is like that, except for every creative or technical career in every industry. It promises to replace all jobs where people are provided creative or intellectual challenge. Nearly every middle class job. Assuming that LLM providers can actually deliver on their promises. But why do we even want to allow them to try?

The owner class gets the lions share of the benefits and none of the drawbacks. The middle class gets almost no benefits, meanwhile their wages get suppressed and the job market gets wrecked.
Even if you're right and this will create new industries, which I'm skeptical of, displaced workers need to retrain at their own expense. How many people, in the middle of their careers and with families, can afford to just start again in a new industry with entry level salaries? And do you know how tough it is for an older person to advance in a new career?
And even then, even if people could afford to switch careers mid-life; where are those careers? Those hypothetical new industries are going to take decades to mature let alone to even be created in the first place. How much unemployment do you think the economy can stand up to for decades?

It's suspicious because you seems like you have a vested interest in AI or in making AI appear positive.
You seem to be framing AI as good for us normal folks, and that the only people at risk are those who do shitty work. That there is some kind of benefit for people to have and that the risk is so negligible that it's fine.
But it's frustrating because you can't seem to describe these benefits, or why the risks are negligible, or even worth it. You just keep steadfastly asserting that it's ok. So where is this conviction coming from and what is the motivation to continue to assert it?

Wow, I didn't know this community was so touchy about their shit post links.

Reminds me of my 9gag days.

Step 8: wake up for real this time. It's 9:30 and you're late.

Calling people against the current incarnation of AI "luddites" is a gross mischaracterization.

I'm glad that you seem to have at least completely given up the pretense that this will somehow benefit society.

Im telling you that again that the jobs that AI makes are orders of magnitude fewer, and far less fulfilling.
I'm telling you again that the impact goes way beyond corpo art jobs.

But youre refusing to listen, or even put up a reasonable defense, you're just reiterating your previous completely unsupported assertion in really suspicious ways.

Nobody is trying to argue the feasibility of stopping the change, we're saying the change is bad. The argument that the change is inevitable therefore it is good (or that at least we shouldn't be upset by it) is crazy

As someone who is part of the problem (working on creating AI products, too scared to quit in protest) I can promise you that is not how it works. That is a frighteningly naive and short sighted view of the repercussions.

Coal mining was bad, and using coal was bad.
We found a replacement for it, which is good. some people were affected, which is bad. But replacing coal had a minimal impact on the overall job market and was a huge benefit to society.

AI is taking away safe skilled jobs from people who love them. It's affecting many industries, and will affect many many more if you can actually believe the promises of the LLM providers.
First it's affecting the fine arts. Beginner illustrators, authors, etc, can't compete, so they leave the industry. After all the old hands die out, there is nobody left to replace them.
Then it's affecting technical industries; software development, hardware design. Same thing, eventually nobody will be left.
Finances and accounting, of course
Then medicine. And there is a knock-on effect here where areas that AI cant do are also affected because the industry as a whole is on the decline so nobody bothers to even apply - you usually start school as a generalist and specialize later.\

And the new "prompt artist" jobs being offered are orders of magnitude fewer and less gratifying.

If what you said was true, then there wouldn't be any benefit to corporations, and they wouldn't be investing billions into it.

All this would be ok if the fruits of this new advancement went back into society, to help people, especially those who were displaced. But it doesn't. It goes straight into the pockets of business owners and shareholders in the form of increased margins and stock buybacks.

You're literally arguing that we should just let big business interests walk all over the job market because that's "just how it is".

That's true.

But in terms of power/emissions, data centers are far far better. The waste of potable water could be addressed if we make them, but the inefficiency of running locally cannot be.

I still prefer to run locally anyways, because fuck the kind of people who are trying to sell AI, but it is absolutely more inherently wasteful

It's not giving them elsewhere.
There is not and will not be an abundance of prompt "engineering" jobs, it's not creating new industries, and it's not significantly lowering the bar for people to start their own businesses is existing industries.

What it is doing is data-mining on a scale never seen before, and increasing profit margins for megacorp business owners.

Honestly that's kinda worse, because it's specifically replacing entry-level jobs

That's almost certainly more wasteful. The machines they run them on are going to be far more efficient.

Running it locally is better because of all the other data mining that goes along with capitalism

There is, and that's typically less bad, but it still has ethical issues with how it was trained.

It's a tool created and controlled by the bourgeoisie, primarily designed to and markered for replacing skilled labor.

The fact you think displaced artists are petite bourgeoisie instead of skilled labor is telling.

I also think capitalism is a race to the bottom, but I believe it is so because it subverts the value of labor. It's shit like AI that makes it a race to the bottom.

shit most wouldn't spend money on or stuff where instead of paying for a stock photo they just generate shit and be done with it.

Then pay for the stock photo. There, an artist is being paid for their work. But realistically the little stuff you're talking about is the occupation of entire departments in megacorps.

It feels like you're directing that at me, but I agree with you, so I'm not sure what tone that was written in

I don't agree:

Before if you chose not to hire someone, you'd be competing against better products from people who did hire someone. Hiring someone gave them a competitive advantage.

By removing the competitive advantage of hiring someone, you're destroying an entire career path, harming the economy and society in general.