All this technology should be lowering the cost of living. Instead, constant inflation in the money supply, via the money multiplier effect, quantitative easing and continuously falling interest rates, eats up all the benefits of increased technology and transfers them to the financial sector and their clients. If there wasn't this huge parasite of debt , which is getting paid to somebody, somewhere who doesn't have to work, thank you very much, it would be dirt cheap to live and people would be able to get by very easily with most of the population not having to work.
Are jobs obsolete?
161–170 of 331 posts
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean to sound condescending (although I'm sure I will), but your theory about the future has already happened, and collapsed, in other countries: USSR and China being two prominent recent examples.
USSR was different where everyone was eligible or provided with the same whereas the poster talks about providing some basic livelihood to all and allowing those who can earn more to continue to earn more and live better.
'where everyone was eligible or provided with the same'
Provided with the same...what? Certainly not housing, food, imported goods, freedom to travel, etc...
Those all varied dramatically with your station and connections.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#163Mr. Rushkoff wants to "organize society around employment", but he ought to reflect that it's going to be organized around _something_. There is going to be a distribution of power, it's an inevitable feature of society. Do we wanted organized around what each of us can do for the benefit of others, as measured freely by those others? Or do we want it organized around what everyone else thinks of us? I can do a lot more about my worries about getting a job than I can about worries about the opinion of my local commissar.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Healthcare may explain why we can't spend yet more than the more-we've-ever-spent-before we're currently spending, but it can't explain why we spend so much more and seem to be getting less and less. Really, very few of the problems we're facing can be explained by not spending enough; rather more can be explained by spending too much with no regard for what we get for our money, then letting people say "well, we jus…
It precisely explains why we're spending more and more and getting less and less. Compound 15% out over 15 years. Educational reform is a broad subject and there's lots of room for experimentation. I'm fine with properly implemented charter schools, especially for the "thousand laboratories" effect. I don't think that chanting "markets" like a religious incantation is particularly effective. But most importantly, don…
As you commented to someone else in an earlier branch, carry that out a few steps; why might healthcare costs rise so much faster than any reasonable measure of the output which funds both education and healthcare?. I don't know the answer. I think the point is that "health care" cannot be pointed out as the root cause, much as "markets" cannot be pointed out as the only solution.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you suggesting that 3/4th - 9/10th of spending is on luxury goods?
It really depends on what you consider a luxury good. For example, some amount of housing is a "necessity", some amount is "nice to have", and some is "luxury", but I doubt people agree on the boundaries. The bar of what people consider a necessity seems to rise with income, so people recategorize what they would've once seen as luxury as non-luxury. I was recently adding up what it would take to live in a cheap-ish…
Yes. My very average house today is a huge luxury compared to the very average house my grandparents bought in the 60s.
I have a cable bill, an iPhone bill, an internet bill, a netflix bill, and too many various SaaS subscriptions. My grandparents had none of those.
I also have a much higher power bill to pay for all my consumer electronics and air conditioning, a higher health insurance bill to pay for drastically better health care, an extra car insurance policy.
That's in addition to all the extra stuff I have lying around. 2 cars, not one, both of which are vastly superior and more expensive than what my grandparents had. Superior home appliances. And 1 metric tonne of electronics.
I have so much more material wealth than all but the very richest did just 50 years ago. How could I complain that I'm not better off?
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#166Pulling out a specific nit:
"America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working."
And from an old college textbook on the definition of economics - Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources.
Here it the hard nut in the thesis, what mechanism, process, or theory, could manage determining who works and who doesn't in a society?
We currently have a system where the wealthiest tax payers pay a grossly disproportionate share of the total tax receipts. Some fraction of those receipts are used to fund the lives of the least wealthy individuals. It doesn't seem to work as well as we would like.
Consider a more communist flavored theory, if Bob's education, skills, and work ethic allow him to generate gross domestic product which would support 5 average citizens. Do we make Bob and his four comrades equal consumers of the GDP that Bob has generated? Would Bob continue to produce at that rate?
Enlightened self interest is a powerful thing. But taking away the 'fruits of one's labor' to redistribute it amongst the less fortunate doesn't motivate the high performers or the low performers to higher economic output.
I am always interested in systems which might replace capitalism as an organizing principle. But until we have such a system we won't be able to manage the disparity of productivity in a socially acceptable way.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#167We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.
So...nobody creates value (or performs work, for that matter) growing the food or building the shelters, right? Riiiiight...
Magical thinking at it's best.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always thought that a 30 hr work week should be regulated, forcing employees to demand higher wages in order to survive, forcing employers to raise wages, and forcing CEOs to be paid less , thus reducing the income gap.
"Reducing the income gap" is not an inherently good thing. If it is, you should be thrilled with the current economy: incomes for the rich have fallen more on a percentage basis than for the poor and middle class.
Citation for this?
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#169I'm not sure the Post Office's problems are related to technology. Their union negotiated a "no layoff" provision in their contract just this year. Why would you agree to that as an employer? Then there is the problem of defined benefit pensions where you end up keeping people basically on staff long after they stop working for you. The Post Office needs to go bankrupt and clear these contracts out and move forward w…
What the Post Office needs is an end to the legislation that has caused this mess. The Post Office is the only entity in the entire country that is mandated by public law to pay 100% towards the future cost of a potential retirees benefits. Not of current retires, not of the guy that will retire in a year, but of every single person that maybe someday, even if it's 30 years away, cold retire from the Post Office. This is the payment that they would default on.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
We spend more per student than we ever have in history. Why wasn't the country in chaos when there weren't public schools at all? Teaching the kids that they are owed something merely because they have less than someone else? Seems to justify theft to me.
Healthcare. It's a healthcare problem in education, healthcare costs are going up by 15% a year and that money isn't there. That's why you hear about teacher layoffs while your property taxes go up and think it's bullshit. And hang out in a ghetto sometime if you want to see what's teaching kids that crime is ok.
Healthcare costs have risen for decades for _all_ industries. Most of them have realized productivity gains and quality improvements. Education hasn't.
And the higher cost / pupil ratio in poorly performing urban districts is a pretty important counterfactual to the spending / quality correlation.
EDIT Downvoted, with someone making the same argument a moment after I did. At least the downvoter is _consistently_ childish.