341–350 of 376 posts
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When I go to the supermarket I go through a self-serve scanner to pay for my items. It's much faster than waiting in line. So yes, some consumers get benefits.
Using a self-serve scanner means you work for free for the store.
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Sweden and the rest of European economies built their wealth on typical capitalism. And I've checked out Sweden, after you've gone into its current situation it ain't so great as communists like Sanders make it to be
*Socialists like Sanders
I'm actually from Poland, a country that had actual communism created by another rich jew that wanted to help "the opressed masses". You think at the beginning any of the commies said straight what they plan to do how it will look like after they're done? And what they will do with the evil burgois (or "the 1%" as Sanders and his cultists name it). You're playing with fire, just be wary.
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What prices are high? One important, central consideration must remain that labor is local. Surely some cities in the US have a labor shortage, and the worse it gets the more financial pressure it puts on the unemployed elsewhere to somehow manage the opportunity cost to immigrate. But the workforce participation rate is at a twenty year low, it is below 1960s levels before women even entered the workforce en masse,…
But the workforce participation rate is at a twenty year low... This confirms what I said - people don't want to work. Workforce participation rate = (working + seeking work) / population. I'm also curious who is "lazily" not working, and somehow still eating and sleeping under a roof. People on public assistance. Millions are exploiting lax standards in disability programs: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ The va…
The majority of the decline in participation is not some magical "nobody wants to work anymore" because people are on average poorer than they were 30 years ago. If...
> People on public assistance.
This is true, then losing workforce participation of millions would cripple our economy if productivity were actually related to peak utilization of human labor. I do recognize the increase in social security disability participation, but 9 million does not make a near 20% drop in participation rates. It is certainly a contributing factor, though.
> It's pretty easy. Offer child care for $7.25/hour and see if anyone tries to hire you.
If there were unfilled positions I would find them online on job sites, but I'm not finding examples. Additionally, remember that 7.25 is not a living wage in many areas, and people have to make the moment to moment decisions whether working at or near minimum wage is worth it if you are still insolvent doing it versus seeking more lucrative income with that time.
> Where do you get the idea that people will be homeless if they don't work?
My mother was effectively days away from homelessness last year, she quit her job in 2012, did not seek additional employment for two years, by being a property owner was ineligible for most welfare, and was being forclosed on for property tax collection. We got to experience the real options she had on where to live - there was no public housing available for at least 18 months, she might have been eligible for subsidized rent but she was not going to get free money for living and the process to get social security disability is not as easy as people on HN like to make it sound.
Here is another thought - if people are dropping out of the labor force and using welfare as a substitute, UBI is in every possible way superior. Social security disability is a disincentive to work, because you lose benefits if you do. The same thing happens at every welfare cliff in the current broken system. I argue personally for UBI because of the negotiating power it gives workers, the capacity for it to normalize the cost of labor against the human cost it incurs rather than exclusively the rarity of the skills necessary to perform it, the normalization of economic stability enabling people to be more entrepreneurial, the extreme amount of social stability it would create to correct for growing wealth inequality, and the extreme simplification of an out of control welfare state bureaucracy.
But obviously valuable work is not going undone. If there were valuable work to be done that nobody were doing, I or any other active market participant would weigh whether pivoting to in demand jobs were out there was economically worth it, and capital really wanted it done, it would raise the price to find someone to do it.
If the marginal value of labor is as low as it must be to prevent the rapid expansion of wage offerings for work done, it means the work not being done as little or no marginal value according to the wills of capital, and we aren't actually losing any economic efficiency having people drop out of participation because the work they would have done, if any, would have been of negligible significance.
Before computerized elevators, there were manually operated elevators. Before automatic telephone switchboards there were manually operated telephone switchboards... Those things were relatively modern. Future people will say: before automated kitchens there were manually operated kitchens, before automated cleaners there were janitors, before self-driving cars there were manual cars... and so on. The domain of tasks…
Agreed. It's interesting that this thread is almost entirely about low wage earners. Truck drivers were added to the conversation, but the truth is it's not about low wage earning, but about rote working. In 10-20 years, i'd expect The job of accountant being pretty much wiped off the map for humans. Turbo Tax, et. al, was a nascent first step. Doctors, Nurses, Hospital Administrators, Staff will be significantly par…
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Kings and queens didn't have to work 70 hour weeks to feed themselves last I checked.
A person on welfare today has more access to a vast number of food options than Kings and Queens of yesteryear. Grapes and wine are extremely cheap and affordable to anyone who has $5 in their pocket. A full meal of chicken and rice can also be had for $3.
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Higher for who and compared to what ? If a television is a requisite for a high standard of living, great, we're beating Ptolemy. It's disingenuous to pretend that you can do an apples-to-apples comparison across thousands of years and attribute it to market economics. Given the tremendous natural wealth in the United States, we'd probably have a higher standard of living most countries even if we adopted mercantilis…
Surely there are no advanced economies without rich natural resources. Oh wait. There's South Korea and Singapore who are some the most capitalist countries on Earth. I'm also questioning your belief that being protectionist wouldn't hurt our standard of living. Do you know the T-shirt you're wearing cost a lot more if it was made in the USA?
I don't think you're wrong by any stretch--market economics are a great idea--but you've got to present better reasoning for anyone to care.
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I think that image of monarchs comes from the movies? The famous inventory of Charlemagne's estate includes 2 cups, one chair and a towel. Their food back then was bad meat and oatmeal, no matter who you were. Indeed, just the existence of cheap antibiotics are likely to make the most humble of today's citizens live decades longer than anyone from the past.
You think the image of monarchs comes from the movies and that actually monarchs had little more than a couple of cups? I'm sorry but that is a very delusional view.
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I'm curious about this. In your ideal above, how would one go about pursuing their dreams without an ability to earn excess capital through labor? For example, my goal is to have a nice house on 50-100 acres. I also really enjoy jet skiing and boating with my family - especially from a nice lakefront rental with a private dock. I can't fathom how I would pursue those goals in a 'leisure society'... Or as a prole woul…
An approach I've considered is, that the living allocation by default is just comfortable. You'd be able to get allocated a city apartment or a rural house. But this is coupled to a delegation based "liquid" direct world democracy where you can either direct your surplus yourself, or delegate it to someone (or some organization). And recursively they can delegate it too. So suppose you were Elon Musk and you said, I…
Sounds to me like if I wanted to buy a jet-ski in your world, I'd have to find a bunch of people to 'delegate' their 'surplus' to me. Perhaps I could perform some function for them in return? Say, that sounds a lot like labor... So I could work for money. Got it.
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Then it seems like the minimum wage is not the underlying issue. If there are too many people and not enough jobs, fiddling with the minimum wage won't have any real effect because regardless of what it is, there are always going to be people who are jobless (and therefore without income). So how do we reconcile the fact that currently, most people must work in order to live and yet there isn't enough work to go arou…
> how do we reconcile the fact that currently, most people must work in order to live and yet there isn't enough work to go around? If you are a big powerful government, you have many tools to reconcile sweeping social problems like this. Foreign wars and civil wars are effective at wiping out lots of people here and abroad. So are infectious diseases. You can also round up and intern undesirable people indefinitely…
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Up until now, the possibility of having a group of people who lead a leisure life without an undercaste of slaves hasn't existed. Automation is a new thing under the sun.
That's funny because the "slaves" in America right now enjoy a higher standard of living than virtually every king and queen before our generation.