They don't need to produce.

Would the world starve if mcdonalds or starbucks suddenly went away? Are the workers there actually producing anything? If nothing of value is produced though a person's labor, then nothing of value is lost when that person stops laboring.

As long as the machines are feeding the people, why would it matter if the work you do is productive?

In Marx's vision of the world, he expected everyone to sit around and write poetry, while the machines did all the work.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But unless there is some serious decline in technological progress, it's more likely that it WILL happen eventually, even if it doesn't happen in our lifetime.

This is the idea that drove Marx to come up with communism. He was there at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and he could see where mechanization would eventually lead. It just took a LOT longer than he was expecting, mostly because he didn't predict the invention of fast-food and starbucks which is the only thing that is currently keeping unemployment under control in the US.

That was a dictatorship wearing a thin veil of communism. Don't confuse Leninism with Marxism

Give it another 50 years or so, things will be different then.

Machines aren't lazy

Marxist communism relies on a level of mechanized production that STILL doesn't fully exist yet.

Please stop with the anti-communist propaganda, it's not 1960 anymore.

Real communism doesn't even have a "boss"

Working twice as long and earning twice as much is fine, but right now we have people who work 1/10th as much, and earn 10 times more (CEOs, lawyers, stock investors, bankers, politicians, etc)

This is the problem that communism was intended to solve. But instead of simply taxing the capitalists, the idea is that the companies will belong directly to the public, with what is essentially a 100% "tax" on all profits.

In ideal communism (which has never existed afaik) the proceeds from increased efficiency would be redistributed to the people. The more efficient the production becomes, the more everyone prospers (either though higher tax revenue for exported products, or lower costs for domestic products)

In Minnesota, its $1000/mo for a household of 1, that's what I meant when I said "for a single person"

Even if you have roommates, they don't count as part of your household unless you also share food costs. Just sharing rent (or sharing a house) doesn't count, so you are still considered a household of 1.

Doh, I typed it into the calculator wrong.

It's actually less than $6.25 even, because there are 52 weeks in a year, not 48 ( which is 4.33 weeks per month), which works out to $5.75/hr

Karl Marx saw this coming over 150 years ago

The final end result of mass mechanized production is that the available workers will far outnumber the available jobs, and this is the problem that communism was intended to solve.

Unfortunately, communism has earned a fatally bad reputation after being misused by so many dictators during the 20th century.

What fast food place pays it's base-level workers $15/hour? A lot of places don't even pay shift managers that much.

Also, the poverty level (at least in Minnesota anyway) is currently $1000 per month for a single person, which works out to just over $11.50/hour at 40 hours/week.

The cost of labor is increasing rapidly in China, especially in terms of US dollars.

http://news.slashdot.org/story...

The lax pollution controls still make it cheaper to produce things in China though, despite the narrowing labor price difference.