Lifeboat Foundation

Talk of a universal basic income (UBI), or regular cash payments with minimal or no requirements for receiving the money, has been brought to the forefront as social distancing and economic concerns have put millions of people out of work.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic Pope Francis says it might be time for some sort of universal basic income.

“This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage” to “acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks” and to “achieve the ideal … of no worker without rights,” Pope Francis said in a letter to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, an organization representing global grassroots organizations, published on Sunday via the Vatican.

Continue reading “Pope Francis: ‘This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage’” »

Staffing shortages amid the 386,000 VA employees are “a root cause for many of the problems in veterans’ care,” said Inspector General Michael Missal.

There are two main reasons for the shortages — low salaries and a lack of qualified applicants, with the former leading to the latter.

Consider this item from the report: VA “medical center directors make approximately 25% of a private sector hospital chief executive officer salary yet have a greater scope of responsibility.” Top pay for a VA medical center director is $201,900.

The rescue package contains specific measures to address the spike in unemployment claims.

“It is reasonable to expect that some, perhaps many, but not all, of these jobs will come back once we venture back into public,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com, said. “One of the goals of the legislation now moving through Congress is to help many businesses survive and retain workers.”

“It’s beyond anything we have ever seen. It’s the speed that is so painful,” Swonk said.

I have not been a supporter of an extended public quarantine or shut down, if any. There are a number of reasons why (governments steal liberty during such times; national debt increases and is used to the point of total socialism; inequality becomes permanent; etc), but in this letter below to everyone I want to talk specifically about why a quarantine is ultimately harming the life extension and #transhumanism movements. Don’t ever forget, we are in a race to save the lives of “everyone” right now with the plague of aging, not just those who might get #coronavirus.

Dear Fellow Humans.

If you believe in the life extension movement of trying to live indefinitely through science and technology, then you likely should not support the worldwide quarantine (at least don’t support it over 14 days in the West where we don’t have the ability to do it as efficiently as Asia). It’s horrible that so many lives will be lost by COVID-19, but in a worse-case scenario it’s likely 100 million people will die globally (mostly older people who have only a few years left to live due to their underlying medical conditions of aging — and who have likely been kept alive due to science and 21st Century medicine anyway). But the damage we could cause (and almost certainly are causing) with the quarantine and shut down to the US and global economy may cost the life extension movement and its scientific research possibly three to five years of progress — because the funding, projects, and jobs around the anti-aging industry will disappear for a notable time. The math shows that if we achieve indefinite lifespans for the human race by the year 2035 vs 2040, approximately 250 million lives will be spared and could then go on indefinitely. The aging math (or life hours) for any transhumanist shows that if we care about human life and longevity — about how long people alive today live — then we should not quarantine the world right now, but get the economy going again as a first priority so that we may fund the future of anti-aging science for the species. Some of us call this reasoning the Transhumanist Wager. For the sake of everyone alive today, it must be acknowledged that there is a dramatically larger percent gain (many thousands of percent) of overall life years for our species by not quarantining and shutting down the world. This is all a horrible scenario, and one I am terribly sad to share with you, but that doesn’t mean we should cower from facts. We owe our species the most courageous decision for its long-term longevity of all its living citizens.

Continue reading “A Letter About Coronavirus, the Longevity Movement, & Why Quarantining is Killing Us” »

By Bill D’Zio March 24, 2020 (Originally posted on www.westeastspace.com)

WestEastSpace mapped out NASA locations on a map of COVID19 impacted areas of USA from www.usafacts.org as of March 23rd, 2020With the launch window for NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover opening in a little less than four months, there are nearly daily pre-launch milestones to complete the rover pre flight activities at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Tight schedules on complex missions usually do not mix well. Now NASA has to contend with another challenge. COVID19.

NASA Leadership Assessing Mission Impacts of Coronavirus

The world has come to a standstill and is in the grasps of the COVID-19. The world stock markets have come crashing down 30% as supply chains and companies attempt to deal with government response and public fear. Airlines and hotels have had to contend with decreased travel and lodging requirements. Logistics is impacted as factories in various countries deal with increased difficulty and requirements to obtain goods. Factories are closed leading to shortages for truckers, material movers, cargo agents, and other occupations directly involved in moving goods. Companies shift to working remotely in an attempt to comply with government guidance in attempts to minimize the impact of the virus. One Mars mission has already been sidelined because of COVID19. NASA also needs to contend with these challenges.

Continue reading “Coronavirus Pandemic Impact on Space Programs Part I” »

At least five downtown Denver hotels have closed temporarily to stem the coronavirus spread, and the statewide industry is bracing for a hit that could lead to as many as 72,000 job losses in a sector that produces a $13.4 billion annual gross domestic product statewide.

While only a handful of mountain resorts had shut down by early this week, that number has ballooned in recent days as hotels across the metro region are reporting vacancy levels below 10% during a month many had predicted would be record-setting, Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association President/CEO Amie Mayhew said. Among those that have announced they will shutter until May 11 or 12 are the Grand Hyatt Denver, the Oxford Hotel, the Crawford Hotel and The Maven Hotel at Dairy Block.

All of those except for the Grand Hyatt are operated by Sage Hospitality Group of Denver, whose CEO, Walter Isenberg, issued a letter Thursday saying he’d made “the very difficult decision to temporarily suspend business operations at a portion of our hotels and restaurants in order to protect the health and safety of our guests, our associates and our communities.”

Companies are already testing driverless trucks on America’s roads. The technology will bring untold profits, but it may cost thousands of truckers their livelihoods.

Day 6 of students learning future jobs skills@ Ogba Educational Clinic.

Ogba Educational Clinic

Theoretically, workers have been on the fast track to obsolescence since the Luddites took sledgehammers to industrial looms in the early 1800s.

In 1790, 90 percent of all Americans made their living as farmers; today it’s less than 2 percent. Did those jobs disappear? Not exactly. The agrarian economy morphed, first into the industrial economy, next into the service economy, now into the information economy.

Continue reading “For a Bright Future of Work, We Must Get Better at Collaborating With Machines” »