BLINDED EYES WITH BLINDED BRAINS

The problem is still automation. The injustice you describe was not as possible when the rich needed labour.

If by this you mean there is enough wealth in the world to keep everyone fed, homed, educated and well. Then yes I agree.

 

How so, please?

Europe has moved a great deal of its small car construction to Spain and North Africa. It is importing wheat from the eastern ex-Commie countries. But, aside from Chinese-junk that sill floods in as brick-a-brack.

Exports are doing OK for the US, however. From here: MADE IN USA: The Top 10 Manufactured Products

 

Good point. I was looking at this point going forward. Not at what we once had.
At this time we are still leading the technology race as well as financial services/insurance etc. We are also still asset rich, but we are steadily losing that lead.
Automation provides both the solution and the problem.
The solution is that it enables countries to move their manufacturing back home without becoming uncompetitive.
The problem is that it does not require much of a work force so the money accumulates with the owner of the automation.

The only solution I see to this movement towards a time when far fewer humans work is to distribute the money in some other fashion such as an affordability tax.

 

Yes, this is an real threat to the way wealth is created through labor. Best to now concentrate wealth accumulation through investments but you have to be already there to a degree.

 

The "solution" must remain within the same overall context, which is this: Supply & Demand.

We can play with both. Uncle Sam can invest where necessary to assure that supply has ample resources and manpower. And by that I mean Education to assure that manpower is adequate to the task. In Manufacturing, workers did not need to think. In a Services economy that factor is a sine-qua-non.

Demand is a variable that depends upon consumer tastes. There is not much a government can do to alter that, and I figure any government that tries to do so is finagling the economy and thus destined from economic-failure to political-failure.

Our present challenge is to assure high-employment levels with the manpower we have. And that manpower is not the smartest in the world. Damn few people go to university.

Sorry to repeat myself (like a broken record): The passage to a Post-secondary Diploma-or-Training must be very, very inexpensive. Those leaving high-school may want to apprentice-themselves in a particular kind-of-work. That possibility should be there for them free-gratis-and-for-almost-nothing and at whatever age suitable ... !

 

WILLFULNESS AND DEDICATION

What I meant were ALL post-secondary degrees - which includes specific Job Training as well. A lot of people go into construction because it is the one area which is not a service and the work must be done in the US and not abroad.

These jobs require "talents" that can be easily taught as post-secondary Job Training. And the teaching of it should be free for all who seek it.

The point I am trying to make is that National Government has the means to intervene in the Job-Challenge by means of training-programs. And not just report monthly the Unemployment Percentage levels.

What is crucial is that our kids (1) NOT LEAVE FOUR-YEARS OF SECONDARY-SCHOOLING as uneducated as they entered it and (2) if wanting to do so they can add to their competencies by a very-low-cost Post-secondary Schooling.

None of that is "magic"- just willfulness and dedication ... !

 

I get you point, Government as a whole, is best suited to pursue a national agenda when it comes to education and standards. Problem, it's unlikely to work in the USA because of many competing interests. It can be achieved but only through a different mindset that Americans are currently unwilling to embrace.

 

VEGAS CASINO OR NEW YORK INVESTMENT MANAGER?

Wealth Accumulation is just as fickle as is its opposite Wealth Loss. IT can be wildly positive and everybody thinks they are on a ride to Great Fortune. Then, BINGO!, it all disappears overnight - and investors are back to where they began.

There is very little difference, in terms of outcome, between a Craps-Table and an Investment Manager's Office. In either instance, you can make one helluva-lotta money and also lose it very quickly! You can have obtained three-degrees in Finance and still lose your shirt in the stock-market!

Let's remember that Investing is (or should be) a willful act-of-knowhow. We should now how, where and when to invest. And still, any such investment is risky.

From Investopedia here: Risk Management in Finance

The challenge regarding Investment-Risk is that it is very difficult to foretell accurately. It is often "just a good guess". Especially when the investment circumstance is in a market not terribly well known, which often "promises" the highest returns in order to obtain investments ... !

PS: As the Romans once put it "Caveat emptor"

 

No it isn't. That's like saying the problem is prosperity, or clean water.

Sure it was. Needing labor didn't stop the rich from starving a million landless Irish peasants to death, just as one example.

 

KEY EFFORT

So, you're saying that "competing interests" (namely businesses?) have a preference by law to teach our kids?

Far-fetched, that one.

Primary- and Secondary-schooling are the responsibilities of local (in state) management. No need to change that except that the law should "oversee" an in-state program towards measuring its capabilities. It is the score on at the end of secondary high-school that demonstrates how well or not a state schooling-program is working.

Kids who are not passing the exams with which to graduate need perhaps special attention and that must be given. For the rest, it is a matter of who is teaching what and are they competent.

That is another point at which the Fed Secretary of Education could intervene. How so? If states agree to a National Plan of Instruction to ameliorate post-secondary education it will receive the financial support it needs to do so. Meaning the cost of teaching paid by the state will be greatly reduced by means of Federal subventions. But, the agreement should also include milestones that must be reached. The most important of which is the level of success at a final-exam that graduates students. Or not. (Those that do not pass the final-exam can go back a retake the final year.)

For the moment the exam that is most important is the one that they submit to a post-secondary institution for acceptance. That, I understand, is given by an outside source. Perhaps it should be brought "in house" to assure quality and uniformity throughout the country?

The key effort of any high-school degree is offer a child the ability to take either of two successive programs. One that teaches them job-skills or allows them to pursue a post-secondary degree at a two- or four year institute of learning. Or, perhaps, just job skills if they did not demonstrate by their final exams the level necessary for entering a pos-secondary educational program.

That's the way it works - more or less - in a good part of the world. And should work in the US in order to get as many (and not just "the best") as possible a post-secondary school diploma ... !

 

No, all land in China is still publicly owned. However, there are definitely problems with corruption, and corrupt land leasing arrangements with politically connected private interests are all too common, as you say. Geoism as an actual working system is still very young, and we can't expect perfection. Any new idea takes time to refine and learn from mistakes.

HK's geoist system had a lot of flaws, but because it was geoism and not socialism or capitalism, it succeeded spectacularly. China's implementation of geoism is even more flawed than HK's because of its legacy of socialism and corruption; but because it is geoism and not socialism or capitalism, it has also succeeded spectacularly.

The fact that China has grown so explosively since adopting the geoist model ~40 years ago despite its legacy of socialism and corruption is testament to the superiority of the geoist system. If they understood why their system is working so well (they don't), they could eliminate the current problems and make it incomparably better.

 

No, re. what I bolded. I am saying that different interpretations of the US Constitution AND the US Constitution, itself, as well as various other interests will make is a state vs federal choice, a individual choice vs common good, a private vs public choice, etc. issue. I am not questioning the importance of an education to oneself or a nation, I am saying you will not achieve the goal you are seeking in this day and age given the individualistic nature of Americans especially in the last 30 years.

 

Ahh understanding dawns
You are talking about vocational training, in the UK we have vocational courses attached to most colleges. They do have problems not least of which is that no one wants to do them, so they have become the domain of those incapable of further education and unwilling to take mundane jobs.
We struggle filling almost every trade in the UK, everything from car mechanic to bricklayer pays good money and has vacancies.
So alongside your very good idea, we need a change in perspective. At least we do if the states is like the UK in this.

 

But it did give rise to the unions and all that followed.
As an aside. How are you able to view our 21st century world from your 18th century room?

 

Yes, democratically accountable governments find they have to rescue the landless from enslavement by landowners through massive interventions in the economy like minimum wage laws, labor standards laws, welfare, union monopoly privileges, public pensions, health care and education, etc.

I am equally at home in all centuries because the facts of objective physical reality are equally true in all centuries.

 

Yes.

I've no idea what objective physical reality is, but your views are 18th century.

 

Propaganda and Disinformation.

You have employed the Logical Fallacy of Equivocation in your false claims by equivocating Wealth with Income.

Your charts....

....are all about wealth, which is not the same as income.

It's really sad that you have to stoop to such levels.

It's even sadder that you're using a tertiary or quaternary source like "statista" who is citing a known Left-Wing secondary or tertiary source, namely the Economic Policy Institute.

To demonstrate to readers how the Economic Policy Institute ("EPI") engages in propaganda, disinformation, lies, deceptions etc etc, I will illustrate using one of the propaganda points they constantly harp upon, which is, um, "Productivity."

The EPI whines incessantly that "productivity" has increased while wages have not.

The way in which the EPI deceptively spews its propaganda and disinformation is by falsely claiming that wages are tied to productivity, and then EPI disingenuously measures productivity in revenues.

The only true, correct and accurate measure of productivity is labor hours versus unit volume.

To prove how EPI lies, consider the following:

200,000 labor-hours; 1 Million widgets produced; unit price is $10; gross revenues $10 Million
190,000 labor-hours; 950,000 widgets produced; unit price is $12; gross revenues $11.4 Million

Did Productivity increase? No, it did not, but EPI will claim it did in order to spew their Llibearl propaganda.

 

And you blindly refuse to accept the irrefutable facts that your federal and State governments, and a special interest group called the American Hospital Association created the nightmare system you despise.

It is impossible to solve any problem without first understanding how/why the problem exists.

You will never realize cost-savings in your healthcare system until you correct all the problems that created the system.

Unless and until you do that, all you're doing is smearing lipstick on a pig.

 

It's called "medical malpractice" and, why, yes, veterinarians are also sued for "malpractice."

As a doctor you must do, and are expected to do, everything possible. Failure to order diagnostic tests is medical practice in the US.

That is not true in Euro-States.

 

Obviously....

Obviously not. The closest thing to my views in the 18th century was physiocracy, which bore about the same relation to my views as 18th century Linnaean taxonomy did to modern genetic taxonomy.

 

How do you define between a necessary and an unnecessary scan?
My wife was a neurological radiographer for 30 years, countless times she was asked to do unnecessary scans by doctors keen to appease patients. The situation must be far worse in the states.

 

Using irrelevant long words is more a sign of lack of understanding than the opposite.

 

They are forced to do that for fear of medical malpractice.

You must understand Americans and Europeans are not the same. It's two totally different cultures.

Europeans go to the doctor to get well. Americans go to the doctor to feel good.

"Getting well" and "feeling good" are not the same thing.

Why does the US have an opiate problem and Euro-States don't?

Again, "getting well" and "feeling good" are not the same thing.

In the early 1990s, hospitals noted patient surveys all had a peculiar pattern.

Patients who experienced little to no pain, rated the hospital positively, even if their surgery or medical treatment/procedure did not go well or wasn't even successful.

But, patients who experienced -- in their little highly subjective brains -- lots of pain, rated the hospital poorly, even if the surgery or medical procedure was a huge smashing success.

The hospital industry then started pressuring the pharmaceutical industry to do something about pain management.

That's how you got Oxycodone.

The drug companies are to blame? No, people are to blame.

And then Americans adopted the totally bizarre belief that everyone should be 100% pain-free 100% of the time.

Notwithstanding the fact that Medicine is not Science, that is totally unrealistic and not even remotely achievable, not to mention it costs a helluva lot of money.

As a result of that, pain management clinics start popping up and they're basically pill-mills. "I bumped my arm. The pain is unbearable. I need Oxy."

And pain medication is over-prescribed, because hospitals don't want people saying mean nasty things about them.

 

You are totally right. The way the lawsuit system operates in US courts is one of the major reasons driving up medical costs.
Not only do hospitals have to charge higher rates to cover the ridiculously huge payouts from lawsuits, and huge legal expenses, but they also are very reluctant to withhold any sort of treatment or test, even if they feel it is expensive and the patient does not really need it, for fear that there may be a lawsuit over it.

Of course the way this whole lawsuit system operates is protected by the very same people who complain about the US having high medical costs.
They don't want to let those "evil big businesses" get away with anything, and are looking for any excuse to hand out huge amounts of "free money" to any of the little people who were wronged or suffered adversity due to chance.

Wow, this probably has religious and philosophical implications, a result of a certain worldview.

 

Not understanding an analogy is nothing to be ashamed of... unless you are pretending to.