Well food stamps isn't exactly charity,...but I will say this, you're position is at least more sympathetic and reasonable than that of most. At the same time though, not being able to provide value deemed worthy by private resources owners, is not the same as not being able to provide value for society, and I personally would rather see these folks work for what they get. Especially while so much need still exists, it just makes more sense to me that we as a society would want to rather pay people to make us all better off, as opposed to paying them to do nothing. -Meta
I'd prefer people contribute. But if someones "work" reduces productivity... it's not a contribution, it's an indulgence. ... and charity is giving help to those in need. Food stamps are charity.
Agreed, and that's why I believe that if we play our cards right, work will eventually be something that people pay others for the opportunity to do, ...not because they need to or as some intermediate step to something else,...but because they actually want to work, for work's sake. We aren't there yet though, and we've got a long ways to go. So would you agree then that it makes sense for even government to hire those folks who otherwise would be put on food stamps, to do things, as long as the things they are hired to do are productive? -Meta
Maybe. If it's something that government needs doing and if it's not more productive to use zerolabor solutions. If the robot could do it better or cheaper, paying George to do it instead may just be a less efficient food stamp program.
Well yeah, if there's a robot around that can do the job more efficiently, for sure let the robot do it. No disagreement there. Though if there's only enough robots around to meet the needs of only private resource owners, and no one else, then there's a problem. In that case, I'd say either hire folks to directly do the jobs the private resource owners aren't having their robots do, or, supposing folks have the skills, hire them to build more of those robots,...enough to give everyone, along with access to the needed resources, such that we all become effectively self-sufficient. If we can get to that point, then we can, as you say, just all sit back and enjoy cheap (ie:free) pie. -Meta
Cheap sure. As long as people want a better tomorrow than they have today, I doubt we'll all eat free pie. But yea, just like a man's labor, yesterdays pie will become less valuable each time society advances.
The problem is that the US is headed in the wrong direction. We are now 12th on the list of nations ranked by economic freedom. We were 2nd ~ 10 years ago. The Obama economic policies have the US economy so forked up that we are growing at a pathetic ~ 1% per capita since the recession ended in 2009. That's ~ 40% of typical and much much less for an economic recovery. ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, increasing the income tax on pass-through small businesses, regulations increasing daily, .... Ridiculous.
These things, they are all band-aid fixes for the most part. But the reason they're there is because for whatever reason a lot of folks aren't willing to address to root issues more directly. Although, that said, regulation is such a broad wide-reaching issue, and some of those regulations are actually beneficial. There are a lot of unnecessary ones out there too I'm sure, but if we're going to discuss them, I think it helps to be specific. -Meta
A WPA is something that policy wonks bring up a lot, but practically speaking, the workforce is a lot different. In the thirties, the workforce consisted of men willing to travel. Now, a large portion of it consists of women, with dependent children. They are not interested in doing construction or roadwork in another part of the country. They want to sit in offices 8 hours a day.
Quite true, employment is not based on the needs of the employee but on needs of the employer and much automation comes about as a result of it being less costly in the long run to replace the human labour with a machine.
The reality is that the human is becoming unnecessary as a machine is capable of performing the labour much more efficiently increasing production while decreasing the costs.
"You give a man a fish you feed him for a day, you teach a man to fish you feed him for life" I saw he above in an early post and while there is some truth to it, today it might be stated as: "When government feeds a man a fish every day, he doesn't have to learn to fish."
Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland And all of society is harmed due to the arbitrary labor price fixing. The goods and services produced by this price fixed labor result in consumers having to pay more for each item. Thus supply of the item decreases and there is less individual income remaining to purchase other goods and services. Unemployment increases which effects both the low productivity young and the elderly as Anders points out above.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that pie becomes less valuable......it just becomes less costly to make. -Meta
That sounds like heavy speculation on your part, and regardless of how the workforce may or may not have changed over the years, I do not think the data supports the idea that people simply aren't willing to do the work. For one thing, as far as I know there are still more folks filling out applications for jobs than there are people hiring.....and, as of 2013 at least, the construction industry actually has the worst ratio for that metric! http://theweek.com/articles/463260/there-are-3-unemployed-workers-every-job-opening So yeah....I'm pretty sure you're wrong on that.....but lets for just a moment assume that you aren't wrong. Let's say that we go ahead and implement a WPA 2.0 anyway. What is the worst that happens? If you're right, then we offer up jobs which no one takes, and we end up not spending the money. If you're not right, people take the jobs and we spend the money as planned. . -Meta
But the money comes from tax payers who do not have the opportunity to spend it. The gov takes a processing fee for collecting and distributing the money. It is much better for society as a whole and in the long run to forget about the WPA. Concepts such as the WPA are based on the broken window fallacy.
And the price is reduced resulting in customers of the pie shop to either buy more pies and/or buy more "other stuff" resulting in higher overall employment and a better standard of living. Our economy and standard of living grow and improve because of productivity improvements. A part of this process is Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction. Some are hurt (lose their jobs) but many more are employed and receive benefits of lower pricing. It is important for gov safety nets to catch and assist those losing jobs in order that they may find new employment in a short period of time.
The best form of population control is security. People who feel secure in their lives have less children. I cannot imagine the amount of money the top .0001% will have to sacrifice to make that happen though. Starvation might work too. As long as the starving don't make trouble.
Why exactly should we forget something which, along with WWII spending, was an integral part in getting us out of the greatest economic catastrophe our country has ever seen??? Seems like forgetting that would be little more than an open invitation for history to repeat itself......and not in a good way. No they're not.....something being of the broken window fallacy implies that it is a proposal touting its benefits while ignoring consequences which outweigh those benefits. Are you then suggesting that the consequences of implementing a WPA 2.0 would outweigh the benefits?...If so, then how so, especially given that that wasn't the case with the original? -Meta
Yes, automation and a lessened need for labor in general is certainly great for humanity. However, if everything becomes automated/we all become unemployed, and only a small few resource owners enjoy the pie, then it wont be so great for those of us who aren't them. The trick would then be to somehow ensure that everyone continued to get a slice of that pie even in a world where labor wasn't needed. Losing one's job then wouldn't actually be such a bad/harmful thing. -Meta
They key to that problem is education and/or training. Freeing up labor from providing the necessities means more labor to provide the luxuries and the creation of wealth to pay for it. Every year it becomes more and more important to have relevant education and training to be able to benefit from the evolution of our society from, for example, a nation where 97% population worked in agriculture a few hundred years ago to 3% today. Education (along with hard work and respect for the process) is the ticket out of poverty.
The policies implemented by FDR kept us in a depression state until the start of WWII. The depression was initiated by trade restrictions (Smoot Hawley Tarriff legislation) and tight money policy but subsequent Keynesian policies and Soviet inspired gov control of industry (NRA & AAA) kept us in a depression for the 30's. We even had a recession in the middle of the Great Depression. Gov taking money out of the economy to pay for "make work" projects makes no contribution to economic growth. Using tax dollars and adding to the national debt to fund "make work" WPA 2.0 projects would do net harm to the US economy. WWII lead to full employment due to the war effort. Remember that the Keynesian economists (including Paul Samuelson) predicted that the US would return to a depression state after the war was concluded. That did not happen because of the investments in capital equipment and the fact that the US economy was ~ 65% of the total global economy after the war.
I don't buy that automation reduces the need for labor overall. The problem is that we have gaps between skill-sets and needed labor. If there was no need to have a job, then nobody would have any money with which to buy which would mean there would be no need for machines to make stuff.
I don't disagree with any of that, but a major part of this discussion is about what happens when even those high-skill education-requiring jobs become automated. I agree that best-case scenario, such will lead to us all having more luxuries and free time etc., but that wont happen if both the natural resources and the automation (which eliminates the need to hire workers for those with the ability to do so)/their benefits,...only reaches a select few. We need to ensure that the benefits of automation and raw natural resources can reach everyone even in the case where labor is not needed by those who would otherwise be the ones doing the hiring. -Meta
Again the key is education and/or training in disciplines which contribute to improving the standard of living. Growing the economy means growing the total wealth of the nation/world. This wealth is then available for both goods and services contributing to material well being of the citizens. Those prepared to take advantage of the increased opportunities will do so. And those who are generally well educated and trained in skilled occupations will be most capable of making career switches should technology advance at the expense of their occupations. All we can do is to make sure as much as possible that people are prepared and flexible.
