I thought that the article was rather well thought through until reaching this:
What if the way to achieve the strongest possible economy is to give every citizen more money to spend? For example, what if we gave every citizen of the United States $25,000 to spend? $25,000 sounds impossible the first time you hear it, but consider the possibility.
Putting aside the laugability of the idea of a capitalist government giving each person a years worth of middle income wage for a moment - it would be great if that could work, but it wouldn't. Price inflation would be rampant. Bread would cost $500 a loaf.
Unless some form of government inforced price fixing went into play (ha!), the money would just shoot right back up the tree.
There's a certain level at which inflation would occur, but that's only if there's scarcity at the supply end. The concern is radical oversupply/overcapacity and underemployment, caused by mass redundancy and automation. It's sort of a game-theory no-win situation where no company would benefit from hiring anyone (because they have automated most of their functions) and thus there's inadequate wealth to generate demand. It's quite plausible, and it may even be a bit of what we have now.
The only way it could have been poossible to hand out $25,000 without inflationthat would hurt our economy would be to give it as stock that could not be sold before for example ten years. That would give ordinary people with no experience with owning stocks insight into the difficaulties of beeing a stock owner.
But because many people would use the stocks as guaranti to take up new mortages the proposal is flawed anyway. On the the other side, from a Darwinistic angle the proposal sound insightful. The p
I think the idea is a negative income tax for the lowest bracket, not a one-time burst of money. It's an idea that has some fans among some conservatives, too.
The idea is that if large segments of the economy are completely automated, the smart thing to do is to make everybody part-owners of them.
After all, the entire state of Alaska has something comparable for its oil-wealth.
Exactly! Gov't HAS NO MONEY to give! Money is seized by the government from the citizens. If the government were to seize money and then redistribute it, that's called.. oh I dunno.. COMMUNISM. The fact is, capital is earned, not distributed.
As you noted, a government has no money of its own. The only way a gov can do ANYTHING is to seize and redistribute from the citizens.
Well, actually a government can own its own industry and thus generate its own wealth. The USSR did that. But that is arguably seizure, by seizing the marketplace.
The only government which never redistributes wealth does NOTHING; they call that anarchy.
You are right in a literal sense. But merely seizing money and spending it is not at the core of what is commonly ca
If the government were to seize money and then redistribute it, that's called.. oh I dunno.. COMMUNISM.
No, that's called THE CURRENT US GOVERNMENT. They are just going about it in a half baked way. The Communists went about it with more dedication (still not complete, though; there were still plenty of privileged classes in the USSR) and failed abjectly. Will the US fail just as abjectly?
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Sunday August 31, 2003 @06:07PM (#6840838)
Churchill may have said it best with, "We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." Karl Marx realized this as well, in stating, "There is only one way to kill capitalism -- by taxes, taxes, and more taxes."
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money."
"America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." [Ayn Rand]
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." [Voltaire]
"America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." [Ayn Rand]
She was absolutely dead-nuts right at the time. But lately it seems the corporations, with fiduciary responsibility only to the stockholders, have turned into evil monsters, exporting jobs, discarding workers like yesterday's trash, yet somehow enriching those at the top more and more, often just for being there, to an outrageous, absurd extent.
I used to think we were headed for 1929. Now I think maybe we are headed for October 1917.
She was absolutely dead-nuts right at the time. But lately it seems the corporations, with fiduciary responsibility only to the stockholders, have turned into evil monsters, exporting jobs, discarding workers like yesterday's trash, yet somehow enriching those at the top more and more, often just for being there, to an outrageous, absurd extent.
The Industrial Revolution of the 1800's and early 1900's was what eventually brought up the income levels of Europe, the U.S., and Japan to first world levels. Thi
"The gap between the rich and poor is much wider today..."
This is simply not true. The problem with statements like this is that the people who usually make them (and then have them repeated by others) never specify who the "rich" and the "poor" are and at what point in their lives they are in.
If you use the "government" definition of the top and bottom 20% of income levels to define "rich" and "poor", you end up with "poor" who are richer than the "rich" of 50 years ago, so how come they are "poor" now?
Now I think maybe we are headed for October 1917.
Because that worked REALLY well.
Well, the original poster was wrong. We would first head for a february revolution, the one that overthrew the Tsar. If they had managed to overcome their inexperience at government and stave off the bolshevik revolution, it might have worked as well as it did for the majority of us Europeans.
It's really only the English that haven't had the socialist revolution.
Indeed, in our current post-Enron, post-Worldcom climate of "corporate accountability", we'd be happy to see a company that even seemed to show some fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. At least if we establish a culture of corporate self-interest, we can then build on that to reach Rand's "enlightened self-interest."
It seems to me the "evil monster" corporation is the result of corporations looking out for the personal interests of the CEO, not the interests of the corporation itself. The la
It seems to me the "evil monster" corporation is the result of corporations looking out for the personal interests of the CEO, not the interests of the corporation itself.
The parent post to this really deserves to be modded up.
Last time I saw that point made was in the book Capitalist Fools, by Nicholas von Hoffman. This is a point that needs to be made in order to understand how modern businesses really work.
Are CEOs 10x as good as they were 20 years ago? Then why are they paid well over 10x as much?
> Read "Street Meat" by Harlan Ellison > to get a picture of what the most linear > projection of current trends are.
Do you mean "Street Meat" by Norman Spinrad? [Just from looking with Google, I haven't read it.] I like his "A World Between" novel.
By the way, no one has raised E.F. Schumacher's book "Small is Beautiful" but he makes similar points -- that only 5% of work is productive, the rest is primarily moving stuff around, and maybe rather than focus on primary production efficiency, we could
The world was not a magical place from 1776-1950, where everyone looked out for the other guy, employers paid their employees as much as they possibly could, and dogs and cats lived together peaceably.
It is extremely dangerous to think that it was all right for others to have Rights and Freedoms previously, but now things are different. So-and-so is no longer nice, supply and demand isn't what it used to be, and others can't be trusted to make the best decisions for themselves.
"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."
Not if the government is more productive with your taxes than you could be yourself. It's the Republican/Libertarian mantra that private citizens would be more productive with that money, but that's not always the case. Look at tech. Where does the highest form of technology live? In national laboratories and universities, NOT companies such as IBM, Microsoft,
You quoted Ayn Rand: "America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and
Government doesn't need to seize money they can just print more of it.
I think it's safe to say just about all governments have convinced themselves that's not a viable method of operating - else none of them would need to raise a cent of taxes. The end result of just printing money would be identical, save the elimination of tax collection expenses and tax preparation expenses - hence more efficient. Inflation would reduce the citizens' buying power, but not as much as it is currently reduced by taxes.
Does anyone know why they just don't do it the easy way, and lighten the load a little on the people?
You've never read an economics textbook, have you? Printed money is (was) used as a substitute for gold, which used to be the primary form of monetary transaction. When the US Mint was created and gold was taken away as a form of legal tender, you could give your gold to the goverment and recieve a paper notes in exchange. The initial idea was for the paper to have to same value as the (now locked away) go
You've never read an economics textbook, have you?
Er, actually I have. There are some glaring holes in your supposed explanation.
1) The government never lets you count its stache of gold. In fact no one is allowed to even view the gold in Fort Knox. Maybe you are a trusting fellow, so when they tell you they have x million pounds of it, you believe them.
2) I doubt the paper money was intended to have "the same value" as gold. That would be $35.00 per ounce (in historic times at least). I think you
Because then people would flee from money. I'd thought about this problem myself; replacing, say, a 30% income tax with printing of money such that money loses 30% of its value. The problem is that it's just money that loses value, not, for example, land or gold or other property. As such, this would not act to tax income, it would act to tax people who hold on to money. (translation: rapid inflation, as nobody wants to hold the hot potato cash)
The problem with inflation-based government financing is there is no concession to reality. When a government taxes, it cannot tax at a rate higher its citizens can withstand. When the government prints funny money -- inflates the currency -- it is much less visible to the average person, and the government has less restraint imposed on it. The outcome of inflation-based government financing is always catastrophic inflation followed by total collapse. People buying bread with wheelbarrows full of cash, etc.
Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped. Where is this clock if I may ask? And how come you are the one that is solely entitled to read it for us. Guess what, I've got my own clock. You keep yours, I keep mine... deal?
LOL! I think what Robert A. Heinlein meant is that history marches on. There is no hint that he is the only one allowed/able to read it. The idea is simply that you'd best not count on being able to stop it.
Money has utility only if it has a reliable value. This is why people liked the Gold Standard -- it was a value that was very hard to tinker with. It was objective -- one could weigh the gold pieces and determine the value directly. With fiat money, it's based on trust and future production (e.g., debt-based). The only thing allowing people to continue to accept paper/fiat money is a relatively stable value. In other words, free of inflation and deflation at too great a value (more that a few percent at mos
This is the difference. It is easy to print more money, difficult to create gold. By backing papermoney with gold, the government can't just create money any which way. As long as inflation is held in check some other way, the currency doesn't have to be backed by gold.
You're exactly right. The gold standard was an historical accident, more or less. It ended up being gold because gold is pretty and very durable (it doesn't rust away, even though it's soft). Money could be backed by any commodity and achie
I understand the part where the restaurant prints the menus on Monday, and inflation is so bad they can't use the menus on Tuesday. I can see where this could be a pretty serious problem. Even in the 1970s in the US, with comparatively mild inflation, I remember the prices in all my mail order catalogs could only be taken with a grain of salt. I used to include a "contingency" in my orders, over and above the calculated amount, to cover inflation. I relied on them returning any unused contingency.
Incorrect. Exclusive use of Land, spectrum, and other natural monpolies is not property, it's Privilege [henrygeorge.org].
The government passes a law that says you and only you can broadcast in Detroit at 73.1 FM; that's a privilege. You should pay money to compensate everyone else for their loss of freedom.
The government passes a law that says you and only you can build stuff on, and keep people out of, parcel 32-1019141; that's a privilege. You should pay money to compensate others for their loss of freedom.
In the United States, people don't get their right to own things from the government. Instead, the government gets all of it's power and authority delegated to it from the people.
You are confusing how government today appears to function with the reality of how it was supposed to work. It's attitudes like this that lead to people thinking that being allowed to keep some of their own property (lower taxes) is somehow a "gift" from the government.
In civilization, we like to keep the violence down to a dull roar, so access to natural resources (i.e., stuff that nobody actually made, so it doesn't rightfully belong to anyone) has to be regulated somehow. That's where the state comes in. If you want civilization, and you want private access to land, it comes from the state. That may even be the definition of civilization.
The question wasn't about civilization. It was a statement that land ownership was just an illusion. It is not, it's like everything else. As real as you wish to make it.
If you want civilization, you might want to actually talk to the civilians instead of finding the quickest way to socialism.
First, I never mentioned any kind of "state of nature" in my comment.
Second, people have always made land theirs by investing their time and effort into it, in the same way that someone can take a piece of wood and carve it into a tool that they own, or plant crops and turn them into their crops.
To say that land ownership doesn't exist naturally is to say that ownership itself doesn't exist naturally, but the reality is that mankind has always owned things.
But mankind hasn't always owned land. Kings owned land. That's what made them kings. Land (taken generally, as stuff that isn't made by humans, and is just "out there") had always been up for grabs for anyone to use. Without a king or some kind of sovereign to say "here, this is yours, everyone else stay off," you don't have any meaningful legal right. This is different from labor and capital items, which are obviously yours if you make them or trade for them.
To be fair, the author does try to explain where the $25K comes from, rather than just printing money. However, I think his ideas aren't much better than simply printing the money.
What I found striking is the lack of reference to physical economy. Somehow we have to actually produce something useful, and the magically robot references do not cut it for me. We have observed an increasing amount of waste in the economic superstructure while we have lost millions of manufacturing jobs. We are in a casino economy.
I am an old larouchie and back in the old days we used to talk about a society where everyone had engineering level jobs. But aside from having a high level of automation,
That will never happen. When our population increases too much to support the darwinist conservative ideology, we will just go to war and kill some people,or stop sending food to countries and let them starve.
I didn't realize other countries were entitled to the money I give the US government in taxes. How about these other countries pull themselves up by their bootstraps like many other countries have done and they can stop the bullshit of killing each other as their national pasttime. From the state of the world these days, you would think "act like it's the middle-fucking-ages" has become an acceptable job. They sure have great little military parades, though. I bet their people think "it's great that we
People are born, live, and die. If you are lucky, you will have the bare essentials of life during that time. We need water, food, and shelter. We also need a host of other "things" which make life bareable, even bring happiness.
When I was younger and more of an idealist, I thought that we were all working towards a higher goal, towards a world where we will solve pressing problems of society, culture, and knowledge. As I've grown older and more jaded. I find that "we" as a whole, really have no goals in mind other than what seems to be personal gratification. This is sad.
I'd like to use science and technology to build a world where the basics of life are essentially free. I would assume the first place to use robots and automation would be in the production of free clean drinking water, and food, then on to shelter, etc.. But what do we use robots for? Vacuming, charming kids with robotic dogs and cats, cell phones for communicating frivilous chit-chat. We as a society seem to have no direction and appear to be going nowhere faster and faster.
Those who do well in the world don't seem to be reaching back to give others a hand. I suppose this is the way its always been. To each his own, and survival of the fittest mentality. I suppose giving creature comforts like food, water, and shelter to every fool on the street might actually make things worse. I don't have the answer to that. But it seems that the entire system could be automated somehow so that those who support the system get the just rewards for free. Hmmm, sounds a bit like open-source eh?
I suppose I long for something like the Star-Trek culture, without the geeky nature that this involves. Can't we all just work towards a future that brings happiness for everyone? Why is there so much hate and personal vengance in the world?
I suppose I long for something like the Star-Trek culture, without the geeky nature that this involves. Can't we all just work towards a future that brings happiness for everyone?
We sure can! You go first, and I'll follow your example.
Well said that man. Thats been my point exactly for a while, and these last few years I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to get others to see my viewpoint. (My site [modblog.com].) I'm glad there are more of us in this world.
I am not a Marxist but there are a couple of important background points here. First, Marx hated Marxism for good reason--Marx was a capitalist. His angry missive of the Communist Manifesto was an amazing display of self-masochism and simply at odds with his real beliefs. Marx, like most academics, described the process of his view on the future of capitalism. Once economic and physical security are attained, we can move on to greater needs that benefit everyone. Case in point, the interstate highway s
I am not a Marxist but there are a couple of important background points here. First, Marx hated Marxism for good reason--Marx was a capitalist. His angry missive of the Communist Manifesto was an amazing display of self-masochism and simply at odds with his real beliefs.
I hope your intentions are good. I will elaborate. Marx intended his economic work, i.e. Das Kapital, to reach industrial societies. The minute agricultural Russia declared themselves "Marxist revolutions", the whole project essentially fell off a cliff. Like Democracy, capitalism evolves. Marx wanted to identify the various stages of capitalism and how it related to industrial Europe and America. As I understand it, Marx was kind of unstable (genius and geek.) He felt like nobody was paying attention to his work and decided on the ridiculous marketing stunt of the 50 page Communist Manifesto. The fallout was severe. He attracted lunatics that discredited his entire life. It's much easier to read 50 pages of troll feed than it is to read a well-developed scholarly work like Das Kapital. He never recovered from it and "I am not a Marxist" was his famous statement on his death bed. Definitely look it up if you have the time.
I'm sure they were. I don't believe his *last* words were "I am not a Marxist" but he definitely said it while in the process of dying. My post stands.
I wouldn't call the Manifesto a "ridiculous marketing stunt".
It is directed towards working people (~1850), and was intended to be the program for the comunist league, so obviously couldn't be written in a "aseptic" or "academic" style.
It certainly contains a lot of marketing, but I think that's normal considering the type of document it is.
On the other hand, I makes a great effort in explaining the communist's views in very simple and plain words (and it succeeds, IMO).
Marx believed that capitalism was better than feudalism and a necessary stage in human progress. But he was not a capitalist by any means at all.
Instead of just quoting an anecdote you've read somewhere, I suggest you actually study the career of Marx in the First International. In fact, it was there that the seeds of the dogmatism and rigidity that would make Stalinism possible may have first been sown.
You may be thinking of Engels, who did own a factory, wrote much of the material that we call "Marx's,"
"Once economic and physical security are attained, we can move on to greater needs that benefit everyone."
Yes, I think this is close to the essence of Marx's reasoning - which I've always taken to be "man can make the material conditions of his own existence, out of his will and reason." Let the markets run their course, and create all of the things that we need, and then we'll take those things and shape the society we want. Of course, between the lines in this essay you read Class Conflict. The uber-gre
The Prime Directive is an excuse to let 3rd world planets / countries wallow in their own filth. What sane group of people wouldn't make available (even for trade!) a cure for cancer pill just because they haven't invented a vacuum cleaner yet? Heck, their yardstick for advancement isn't even an idea, it's a physical invention. It's just sad.
But it seems that the entire system could be automated somehow so that those who support the system get the just rewards for free.
If they support the system then they will not be getting anything free. A "re-ward" is something given in exchange for something else. If they worked for the system they could be simply... gasp... paid! So, what are you smoking my dear friend? I know, I know, this Slashdot and there is no work tomorrow...
There is an important concept I learned in psychology recently. A human's intelligence is partially based on their environment. And since shelter and the proper environment cost money, our intelligence is based on money. As was discovered by someone looking at racial demographics, poverty levels and SAT scores.
But it won't ever sink in. Nobody cares.
No matter how many times you repeat it. We'll still let people live in the streets. We won't be their friend or care for them won't get them good qualit
What the hell are you talking about? People aren't living in the streets because the lack of money is making them stupid. They're living in the streets because the tend to have mental problems.
We have MANY social programs, and anyone who has their act together can pull themselves up and off the streets.
On giving back, in 2003, individuals gave $180 billion to charity, and all charitable giving (including corporations and foundations) was $240 billion.
Those who do well in the world don't seem to be reaching back to give others a hand. I suppose this is the way its always been.
No. There are two reasons to reach back: justice, and charity. Now, those two things have varied throughout history. Sometimes there's more of it, and sometimes there's less of it.
But let me postulate for you a couple of things:
(1) You are always going to have a bell curve distribution of wealth. You can't get around it. A few people will have almost nothing; a few people
You are always going to have a bell curve distribution of wealth. You can't get around it.
Well, no. In fact, the only way to have this outcome is to model the economy on some pretty idealistic assumptions - things like low friction transactions, some small delta away from reasonable information flows, lack of monopolies (to maintain positive eigenvalues in the demand-supply equations), at least a reasonable need for labor, all of which seem to be disappearing under the control of the new gov-corp hegemony
[on 3rd world countries; feudal societies] Sorry, that's probably true. In the case of the third world countries, where you have what is essentially apartheid, you'll probably see a double bell curve, not a single one. That is, one bell curve for the whites of South Africa, and another for the blacks. Same thing in the South American countries, different people.
In the case of a feudal society, your sample sizes were always small. A bell curve is never an exact thing, it is an entropic approximation of
Goals and meaning in life have to flow from you. Looking around you and bemoaning the lack of goals and seeming self-gratification of society also serves little purpose.
If you have a dream you have a duty to follow it - no matter what. If you don't, there are plenty of others who will - and many times their goals are far darker than anything their peers ever imagined (Hitler, Saddam, BinLadin, the WTO, Mafia, Drug Lords, etc...).
If you are a counterbalance, get out there and start doing what you were me
Collective control? How does that work? Does everyone get to vote on how things will be run?
Like a democracy?:-)
Anyway, this won't work. People will get tired of being bugged about every little decision. They will appoint others to be in charge of certain aspects of society. All of a sudden, we have a priviliged class again.
I can see communism working for a primitive society, not for a complex modern one.
anyone want to guess what's going to happen to a billion unemployed Chinamen? It might lead to class warfare in the US, but it will be apocalyptic in the manufacturing sector.
I guess you didn't get the point of the entire exercise. Think redistribution. Think world love and revolution. Think geek... Why do you have to ask such uncomfortable questions? Why?
Price inflation would happen. But it would be a huge equalizer. If we assume that $25,000 is the current household average, then giving every household another $25K will double the amount of money in the economy, hence we will assume the doubling the price of all goods and services (not the 250x increase you propose).
Now that everything costs twice as much, the person getting by on $10000 a year now has $35000, which amounts to $17,500 in pre-inflation dollars. In short, he just got a pay raise.
Meanwhile, the family which once earned $1,000,000 a year suddenly finds everything twice as expensive, lowering their effective income to $500,000.
Further, whatever debts you owed could be paid back much more easily in an inflationary economy. If a loaf of bread really costs $500, then you could pay off all your student loans by baking thirty loaves of bread. Inflation has always been better for debtors than for creditors. Read up on the whole "gold standard" politics of the late 1800s. It's dry reading, but relevant.
Finally, you ignore the overall thrust of the article: He is proposing this plan because, in the world he envisions, there is a vast amount of wealth being created by robots, with all the wealth going to the owners of the robots. Average schmoes are locked out of that stream because they can no longer provide any services that the owners would exchange their wealth for, because a robot can do unskilled (and even low-skilled) labor better, faster, and cheaper.
America has never been a purely capitalistic government. The government has taken it upon itself to do things like divy up land, control imports and exports, build armies, and a host of other things rather than let "The Market" find its own solutions. Every regulation is an affront to the ideal of a purely capitalistic marketplace. This state of affairs is A Good Thing. Would we want to live in a world where Biggasse Corp could dump their toxic waste on the outskirts of Smelterville, MI because its residents were too poor to make it expensive to do so? Where any amount of pollutants could be flung into the atmosphere because the corporation doing the flinging didn't have to bear the costs that pollution imposes on the rest of us? There are places where capitalism works, and places where it doesn't. The entire point of the article is that we're about to run up against a situation where capitalism Does Not Work.
very regulation is an affront to the ideal of a purely capitalistic marketplace.
That's not true. I think you may be confusing anarchy with capitalism. Capitalism requires a government to enfore contracts, ownership of property, and establish and maintain a "level playing field" for the market. A "free market" isn't a government-less market. It's just a market where there are no subsidies and/or special priviledges, and where people can expect contracts to be enforced by a neutral third party.
Capitalism requires a government to enfore contracts, ownership of property, and establish and maintain a "level playing field" for the market.
Capitalism requires a *system* "to enfore contracts, ownership of property, and establish and maintain a "level playing field" for the market." A government is only one such system.
Price inflation would happen. But it would be a huge equalizer. If we assume that $25,000 is the current household average, then giving every household another $25K will double the amount of money in the economy, hence we will assume the doubling the price of all goods and services (not the 250x increase you propose).
You can't assume that this would be $25,000 in addition to the existing incoming because it is already assumed that these people are not working due to massive amounts of automation.
The guy says 25k per person, not per household.
What a great incentive to have more children. My wife and I could pull down 200 G's with just 6 kids. Yes, and we'd all enjoy new freedom and creativity. Or maybe we'd just sit around and watch TV while robots delivered us pizza.
Why does this guy think one of our goals should be to increase the minimum wage when that would surely increase the rate at which people would be replaced by robots?
Another gem is using the lottery as a revenue source. Lotter
I highly doubt that things would be set up so there was a huge financial incentive to make more people. The whole point of this exercise is to imagine a world where much of what we do is now obsolete. Focus should be shifting towards providing a standard of living for the current population. Why would a society reward superfluous breeding at a time when we would be racking our brains for things for people to do?
It doesn't cost $25,000 a year to raise a baby, and you wouldn't be getting $25,000 a year f
Ahh yess but what about all those trillions of dollars in bonds that are owned by the rest of the world. For instance the Central Banks of Japan and China have a few hundred billion dollars invested in our U.S Government bonds that are returning 3-4% interest. If you tell them that the supply of dollars doubled they are going to be really really upset because their bond return is now -50%. They are then going to dump all those bonds and send the U.S dollar into a hyperinflationary tailspin.
A) These countries are facing the same unemployment boom being faced by the U.S.
B) These countries are not facing the same boom, because they haven't invested in robotics.
In the first case, the countries will be under the same pressures to redistribute wealth. In the second case, it doesn't matter what they think of our monetary policy. Robot labor (which we have and they don't) becomes a much more reliable indicator of wealth than greenbacks
Now that everything costs twice as much, the person getting by on $10000 a year now has $35000, which amounts to $17,500 in pre-inflation dollars. In short, he just got a pay raise.
Huh? The reality of inflation from an employee standpoint is that each week his paycheck will buy him less and less in terms of goods. Are you assuming that the employee has negotiated a wage that takes hyper-inflation into account and rises by a certain percent each week? You do seem to be implying this in your example of a 10
Actually, I was just thinking about the effects of a one time payment. Though if this doubling happened every year, the same thing would happen each time.
Huh? The reality of inflation from an employee standpoint is that each week his paycheck will buy him less and less in terms of goods. Are you assuming that the employee has negotiated a wage that takes hyper-inflation into account and rises by a certain percent each week? You do seem to be implying this in your example of a 10k wage increasing to 35
Price inflation destroys the wealth of the poor. It's the fixed income people (retired, on the dole, or minimum wage) that get the new money last. The folks who are buddies with the government handing out the money get the new, inflated, money first, and the prices rise. The fixed income folks get the new money last.
Yes, existing debts would be paid off rather quickly. Unless the banks got the government to declare bank holidays and other devices so they wouldn't go bankrupt. Oh, and interest rates w
Price inflation destroys the wealth of the poor. It's the fixed income people (retired, on the dole, or minimum wage) that get the new money last. The folks who are buddies with the government handing out the money get the new, inflated, money first, and the prices rise. The fixed income folks get the new money last.
Right. So how is that any different from the current system?
The thing is, the poor--by definition--have no wealth to destroy.
In the modern world, when the government starts printing money
Meanwhile, the family which once earned $1,000,000 a year suddenly finds everything twice as expensive, lowering their effective income to $500,000.
Not really, because a major part of that $1M is spent not on the same things that poor man's $25K would be spent, right? Even assuming that one actually burns through $1M a year in personal consumption (easier than I thought, only $2739/day;-) ), it's not going to be spent on bread and milk and even cheap booze...
Myself, I'd suggest building this all into the tax system. Anyone under the median income is garenteed to get some money (a reverse tax) while anyone over the median is garenteed to pay a tax to fund this and other government needs. The poorer you are the more money you get and the richer you are the more you're taxed.. but not so much as to negate the benefit of making more money to begin with. There should be a benefit to working harder, working smarter, etc. The idea is to pull the bottom and the top bac
The premise of the article is that robots are producing massive amounts of goods, and that the majority of country will see a reduction in buying power. This is the basic recipe for deflation on a huge scale. Given that, while giving $25,000 to everyone will create large inflationary trends, it should be offset by the deflationary environment created by the robots. (ie: no $500 bread)
If you accept that you don't need your country to advance anymore, and machines are covering the basics for you then y
Obviously false, I don't know how you get this idea.
The demand/supply would still be the same (unless it were to rise so much as to bancrupt businesses, which I assume you won't let happen), so prices would remain the same.
The obvious proof : a lot of countries have minimum wages (a lot) higher than the us, and their economy didn't collapse.
A minimum wage is only effective when it is higher than the lowest market price for labor, and when it is higher it creates a privileged worker class and a less skilled but completely unemployable class. When someone raises the price of a good, I will buy less of that good if I can (when it's "elastic").
Some jobs may be absolutely necessary to run the business. Others may be optional. I will buy more CDs at $10 than I will at $20. I will tend to hire more workers at a lower price than a higher one.
If the government starts printing lots of money to cover a big cash payment to millions of people inflation would run wild.
There have been countries that printed more currency to cover government expenses. What happened is that the value of their money went down compaired to other countries money.
A country's paper money must be balanced against something. When we were on the gold standard it was gold. I don't know what the US balances it's paper money against now. Maybe GNP? Others ma
Not exactly, though a price increase could be expected in some segments of the economy. Others would stay about the same. (For example, it's a good bet that most minimum wage earners won't be buying a learjet or any sort of heavy equipment, even at $20 an hour).
It would do two things. Jobs that could be effectively exported would be, those that can't (McSlaves for example, on-site construction for another) would be automated at a greater rate. A machine that was too expensive compared to a $6/hr. worker m
Unix is the worst operating system; except for all others.
-- Berry Kercheval
Almost insightful.. (Score:4, Insightful)
What if the way to achieve the strongest possible economy is to give every citizen more money to spend? For example, what if we gave every citizen of the United States $25,000 to spend? $25,000 sounds impossible the first time you hear it, but consider the possibility.
Putting aside the laugability of the idea of a capitalist government giving each person a years worth of middle income wage for a moment - it would be great if that could work, but it wouldn't. Price inflation would be rampant. Bread would cost $500 a loaf.
Unless some form of government inforced price fixing went into play (ha!), the money would just shoot right back up the tree.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
But because many people would use the stocks as guaranti to take up new mortages the proposal is flawed anyway. On the the other side, from a Darwinistic angle the proposal sound insightful. The p
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
The idea is that if large segments of the economy are completely automated, the smart thing to do is to make everybody part-owners of them.
After all, the entire state of Alaska has something comparable for its oil-wealth.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
The only way you're going to get that kind of inflation is if you just print out the money without any thought of devaluing the dollar.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
Okay, so if everyone has a ton of disposable income, what are they going to do *but* spend it? (Save it? Right.)
That will make aggregate demand shoot through the roof. There's your scarcity of supply.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
[*] one of the names for this idea.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:5, Insightful)
ANY GOVERNMENT AT ALL.
As you noted, a government has no money of its own. The only way a gov can do ANYTHING is to seize and redistribute from the citizens.
The only government which never redistributes wealth does NOTHING; they call that anarchy.
Redistribution and largesse (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, actually a government can own its own industry and thus generate its own wealth. The USSR did that. But that is arguably seizure, by seizing the marketplace.
The only government which never redistributes wealth does NOTHING; they call that anarchy.
You are right in a literal sense. But merely seizing money and spending it is not at the core of what is commonly ca
Re:Redistribution and largesse (Score:3, Insightful)
> state of handing out tax rebates to citizens
> WHO HAVE NOT PAID FEDERAL INCOME TAXES!
I haven't heard of that, it would be interesting if true. Could you provide a reference?
Re:Redistribution and largesse (Score:4, Informative)
Resdistribution (Score:2)
No, that's called THE CURRENT US GOVERNMENT. They are just going about it in a half baked way. The Communists went about it with more dedication (still not complete, though; there were still plenty of privileged classes in the USSR) and failed abjectly. Will the US fail just as abjectly?
Re:Resdistribution (Score:5, Insightful)
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money."
"America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." [Ayn Rand]
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." [Voltaire]
What has gone wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
She was absolutely dead-nuts right at the time. But lately it seems the corporations, with fiduciary responsibility only to the stockholders, have turned into evil monsters, exporting jobs, discarding workers like yesterday's trash, yet somehow enriching those at the top more and more, often just for being there, to an outrageous, absurd extent.
I used to think we were headed for 1929. Now I think maybe we are headed for October 1917.
Re:What has gone wrong (Score:2)
The Industrial Revolution of the 1800's and early 1900's was what eventually brought up the income levels of Europe, the U.S., and Japan to first world levels. Thi
Re:What has gone wrong (Score:2)
This is simply not true. The problem with statements like this is that the people who usually make them (and then have them repeated by others) never specify who the "rich" and the "poor" are and at what point in their lives they are in.
If you use the "government" definition of the top and bottom 20% of income levels to define "rich" and "poor", you end up with "poor" who are richer than the "rich" of 50 years ago, so how come they are "poor" now?
Re:What has gone wrong (Score:2)
Because that worked REALLY well.
Re:What has gone wrong (Score:2)
Re:What has gone wrong (Score:2)
Well, the original poster was wrong. We would first head for a february revolution, the one that overthrew the Tsar. If they had managed to overcome their inexperience at government and stave off the bolshevik revolution, it might have worked as well as it did for the majority of us Europeans.
It's really only the English that haven't had the socialist revolution.
Re:What has gone wrong (Score:1)
Indeed, in our current post-Enron, post-Worldcom climate of "corporate accountability", we'd be happy to see a company that even seemed to show some fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. At least if we establish a culture of corporate self-interest, we can then build on that to reach Rand's "enlightened self-interest."
It seems to me the "evil monster" corporation is the result of corporations looking out for the personal interests of the CEO, not the interests of the corporation itself. The la
short-term thinking in a long term world (Score:2)
The parent post to this really deserves to be modded up.
Last time I saw that point made was in the book Capitalist Fools, by Nicholas von Hoffman. This is a point that needs to be made in order to understand how modern businesses really work.
Are CEOs 10x as good as they were 20 years ago? Then why are they paid well over 10x as much?
Re:short-term thinking in a long term world (Score:2)
> to get a picture of what the most linear
> projection of current trends are.
Do you mean "Street Meat" by Norman Spinrad? [Just from looking with Google, I haven't read it.] I like his "A World Between" novel.
By the way, no one has raised E.F. Schumacher's book "Small is Beautiful" but he makes similar points -- that only 5% of work is productive, the rest is primarily moving stuff around, and maybe rather than focus on primary production efficiency, we could
Re:What has gone wrong (Score:1)
It is extremely dangerous to think that it was all right for others to have Rights and Freedoms previously, but now things are different. So-and-so is no longer nice, supply and demand isn't what it used to be, and others can't be trusted to make the best decisions for themselves.
If it's October 1917, hea
Re:Resdistribution (Score:2)
Not if the government is more productive with your taxes than you could be yourself. It's the Republican/Libertarian mantra that private citizens would be more productive with that money, but that's not always the case. Look at tech. Where does the highest form of technology live? In national laboratories and universities, NOT companies such as IBM, Microsoft,
Re:Resdistribution (Score:2)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2, Funny)
Why not the easy way (Score:2)
I think it's safe to say just about all governments have convinced themselves that's not a viable method of operating - else none of them would need to raise a cent of taxes. The end result of just printing money would be identical, save the elimination of tax collection expenses and tax preparation expenses - hence more efficient. Inflation would reduce the citizens' buying power, but not as much as it is currently reduced by taxes.
Re:Why not the easy way (Score:1)
You've never read an economics textbook, have you? Printed money is (was) used as a substitute for gold, which used to be the primary form of monetary transaction. When the US Mint was created and gold was taken away as a form of legal tender, you could give your gold to the goverment and recieve a paper notes in exchange. The initial idea was for the paper to have to same value as the (now locked away) go
Textbooks are not the answer (Score:2)
Er, actually I have. There are some glaring holes in your supposed explanation.
1) The government never lets you count its stache of gold. In fact no one is allowed to even view the gold in Fort Knox. Maybe you are a trusting fellow, so when they tell you they have x million pounds of it, you believe them.
2) I doubt the paper money was intended to have "the same value" as gold. That would be $35.00 per ounce (in historic times at least). I think you
Re:Why not the easy way (Score:1)
Re:Why not the easy way (Score:2)
The problem with inflation-based government financing is there is no concession to reality. When a government taxes, it cannot tax at a rate higher its citizens can withstand. When the government prints funny money -- inflates the currency -- it is much less visible to the average person, and the government has less restraint imposed on it. The outcome of inflation-based government financing is always catastrophic inflation followed by total collapse. People buying bread with wheelbarrows full of cash, etc.
Re:Why not the easy way (Score:1)
Where is this clock if I may ask? And how come you are the one that is solely entitled to read it for us. Guess what, I've got my own clock. You keep yours, I keep mine... deal?
The clock of history (Score:2)
Mystical confidence in other than paper money (Score:2)
Re:Mystical confidence in other than paper money (Score:2)
You're exactly right. The gold standard was an historical accident, more or less. It ended up being gold because gold is pretty and very durable (it doesn't rust away, even though it's soft). Money could be backed by any commodity and achie
Re:Mystical confidence in other than paper money (Score:2)
Actua
Privilege, not Property (Score:2)
Incorrect. Exclusive use of Land, spectrum, and other natural monpolies is not property, it's Privilege [henrygeorge.org].
The government passes a law that says you and only you can broadcast in Detroit at 73.1 FM; that's a privilege. You should pay money to compensate everyone else for their loss of freedom.
The government passes a law that says you and only you can build stuff on, and keep people out of, parcel 32-1019141; that's a privilege. You should pay money to compensate others for their loss of freedom.
Re:Privilege, not Property (Score:3, Insightful)
You are confusing how government today appears to function with the reality of how it was supposed to work. It's attitudes like this that lead to people thinking that being allowed to keep some of their own property (lower taxes) is somehow a "gift" from the government.
Re:Privilege, not Property (Score:2)
In what "state of nature" did you ever own land, including the right to keep others away from it? Who did you buy that right from?
Land ownership is like intellectual property--it doesn't exist until the sovereign says it exists. It's not a natural right.
Re:Privilege, not Property (Score:2)
Re:Privilege, not Property (Score:2)
Sure, if you're opposed to civilization.
In civilization, we like to keep the violence down to a dull roar, so access to natural resources (i.e., stuff that nobody actually made, so it doesn't rightfully belong to anyone) has to be regulated somehow. That's where the state comes in. If you want civilization, and you want private access to land, it comes from the state. That may even be the definition of civilization.
Re:Privilege, not Property (Score:2)
If you want civilization, you might want to actually talk to the civilians instead of finding the quickest way to socialism.
Re:Privilege, not Property (Score:2)
Second, people have always made land theirs by investing their time and effort into it, in the same way that someone can take a piece of wood and carve it into a tool that they own, or plant crops and turn them into their crops.
To say that land ownership doesn't exist naturally is to say that ownership itself doesn't exist naturally, but the reality is that mankind has always owned things.
Re:Privilege, not Property (Score:2)
But mankind hasn't always owned land. Kings owned land. That's what made them kings. Land (taken generally, as stuff that isn't made by humans, and is just "out there") had always been up for grabs for anyone to use. Without a king or some kind of sovereign to say "here, this is yours, everyone else stay off," you don't have any meaningful legal right. This is different from labor and capital items, which are obviously yours if you make them or trade for them.
Modern economists make a hash of things
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
I am an old larouchie and back in the old days we used to talk about a society where everyone had engineering level jobs. But aside from having a high level of automation,
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1, Troll)
That will never happen. When our population increases too much to support the darwinist conservative ideology, we will just go to war and kill some people,or stop sending food to countries and let them starve.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
Goal-less productivity... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was younger and more of an idealist, I thought that we were all working towards a higher goal, towards a world where we will solve pressing problems of society, culture, and knowledge. As I've grown older and more jaded. I find that "we" as a whole, really have no goals in mind other than what seems to be personal gratification. This is sad.
I'd like to use science and technology to build a world where the basics of life are essentially free. I would assume the first place to use robots and automation would be in the production of free clean drinking water, and food, then on to shelter, etc.. But what do we use robots for? Vacuming, charming kids with robotic dogs and cats, cell phones for communicating frivilous chit-chat. We as a society seem to have no direction and appear to be going nowhere faster and faster.
Those who do well in the world don't seem to be reaching back to give others a hand. I suppose this is the way its always been. To each his own, and survival of the fittest mentality. I suppose giving creature comforts like food, water, and shelter to every fool on the street might actually make things worse. I don't have the answer to that. But it seems that the entire system could be automated somehow so that those who support the system get the just rewards for free. Hmmm, sounds a bit like open-source eh?
I suppose I long for something like the Star-Trek culture, without the geeky nature that this involves. Can't we all just work towards a future that brings happiness for everyone? Why is there so much hate and personal vengance in the world?
-2 -2 +3 +1
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:1)
We sure can! You go first, and I'll follow your example.
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:1)
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
Really?? Can you elaborate on that point?
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
Actually, his last words were:
"Out, out, last words are for people who have nothing to say."
Or I guess it would be:
"Raus, raus! Letzte woerter sind fure Leute, die nichts zu sagen haben."
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:1)
It is directed towards working people (~1850), and was intended to be the program for the comunist league, so obviously couldn't be written in a "aseptic" or "academic" style.
It certainly contains a lot of marketing, but I think that's normal considering the type of document it is.
On the other hand, I makes a great effort in explaining the communist's views in very simple and plain words (and it succeeds, IMO).
Of course the great majority
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of just quoting an anecdote you've read somewhere, I suggest you actually study the career of Marx in the First International. In fact, it was there that the seeds of the dogmatism and rigidity that would make Stalinism possible may have first been sown.
You may be thinking of Engels, who did own a factory, wrote much of the material that we call "Marx's,"
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:1)
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:1)
especially when it's bareable...
rd
The Prime Directive is for suckers (Score:1)
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:1)
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:3, Insightful)
But it won't ever sink in. Nobody cares.
No matter how many times you repeat it. We'll still let people live in the streets. We won't be their friend or care for them won't get them good qualit
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2, Troll)
We have MANY social programs, and anyone who has their act together can pull themselves up and off the streets.
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
No. There are two reasons to reach back: justice, and charity. Now, those two things have varied throughout history. Sometimes there's more of it, and sometimes there's less of it.
But let me postulate for you a couple of things:
(1) You are always going to have a bell curve distribution of wealth. You can't get around it. A few people will have almost nothing; a few people
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
Well, no. In fact, the only way to have this outcome is to model the economy on some pretty idealistic assumptions - things like low friction transactions, some small delta away from reasonable information flows, lack of monopolies (to maintain positive eigenvalues in the demand-supply equations), at least a reasonable need for labor, all of which seem to be disappearing under the control of the new gov-corp hegemony
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
In the case of a feudal society, your sample sizes were always small. A bell curve is never an exact thing, it is an entropic approximation of
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
If you have a dream you have a duty to follow it - no matter what. If you don't, there are plenty of others who will - and many times their goals are far darker than anything their peers ever imagined (Hitler, Saddam, BinLadin, the WTO, Mafia, Drug Lords, etc...).
If you are a counterbalance, get out there and start doing what you were me
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
Re:Goal-less productivity... (Score:2)
Like a democracy?
Anyway, this won't work. People will get tired of being bugged about every little decision. They will appoint others to be in charge of certain aspects of society. All of a sudden, we have a priviliged class again.
I can see communism working for a primitive society, not for a complex modern one.
2025, here comes the Butlerian Jihad (Score:1)
Re:2025, here comes the Butlerian Jihad (Score:1)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Price inflation would happen. But it would be a huge equalizer. If we assume that $25,000 is the current household average, then giving every household another $25K will double the amount of money in the economy, hence we will assume the doubling the price of all goods and services (not the 250x increase you propose).
Now that everything costs twice as much, the person getting by on $10000 a year now has $35000, which amounts to $17,500 in pre-inflation dollars. In short, he just got a pay raise.
Meanwhile, the family which once earned $1,000,000 a year suddenly finds everything twice as expensive, lowering their effective income to $500,000.
Further, whatever debts you owed could be paid back much more easily in an inflationary economy. If a loaf of bread really costs $500, then you could pay off all your student loans by baking thirty loaves of bread. Inflation has always been better for debtors than for creditors. Read up on the whole "gold standard" politics of the late 1800s. It's dry reading, but relevant.
Finally, you ignore the overall thrust of the article: He is proposing this plan because, in the world he envisions, there is a vast amount of wealth being created by robots, with all the wealth going to the owners of the robots. Average schmoes are locked out of that stream because they can no longer provide any services that the owners would exchange their wealth for, because a robot can do unskilled (and even low-skilled) labor better, faster, and cheaper.
America has never been a purely capitalistic government. The government has taken it upon itself to do things like divy up land, control imports and exports, build armies, and a host of other things rather than let "The Market" find its own solutions. Every regulation is an affront to the ideal of a purely capitalistic marketplace. This state of affairs is A Good Thing. Would we want to live in a world where Biggasse Corp could dump their toxic waste on the outskirts of Smelterville, MI because its residents were too poor to make it expensive to do so? Where any amount of pollutants could be flung into the atmosphere because the corporation doing the flinging didn't have to bear the costs that pollution imposes on the rest of us? There are places where capitalism works, and places where it doesn't. The entire point of the article is that we're about to run up against a situation where capitalism Does Not Work.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:3, Informative)
That's not true. I think you may be confusing anarchy with capitalism. Capitalism requires a government to enfore contracts, ownership of property, and establish and maintain a "level playing field" for the market. A "free market" isn't a government-less market. It's just a market where there are no subsidies and/or special priviledges, and where people can expect contracts to be enforced by a neutral third party.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
Capitalism requires a government to enfore contracts, ownership of property, and establish and maintain a "level playing field" for the market.
Capitalism requires a *system* "to enfore contracts, ownership of property, and establish and maintain a "level playing field" for the market." A government is only one such system.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
You can't assume that this would be $25,000 in addition to the existing incoming because it is already assumed that these people are not working due to massive amounts of automation.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
Why does this guy think one of our goals should be to increase the minimum wage when that would surely increase the rate at which people would be replaced by robots?
Another gem is using the lottery as a revenue source. Lotter
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
It doesn't cost $25,000 a year to raise a baby, and you wouldn't be getting $25,000 a year f
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
Same thing h
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:3, Insightful)
A) These countries are facing the same unemployment boom being faced by the U.S.
B) These countries are not facing the same boom, because they haven't invested in robotics.
In the first case, the countries will be under the same pressures to redistribute wealth. In the second case, it doesn't matter what they think of our monetary policy. Robot labor (which we have and they don't) becomes a much more reliable indicator of wealth than greenbacks
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
Huh? The reality of inflation from an employee standpoint is that each week his paycheck will buy him less and less in terms of goods. Are you assuming that the employee has negotiated a wage that takes hyper-inflation into account and rises by a certain percent each week? You do seem to be implying this in your example of a 10
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:3, Funny)
That's what life was all about.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
Your typical millionaire is a dentist, or a lawyer or a small business owner. Someone who makes his money selling goods and services.
So if demand skyrockets, his profits are going to jump up too. So he'll be making twice as much.
This whole notion of "equalizing wealth" is a nice way of saying "soak the rich." It's a more genteel demagoguery.
No method of s
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
Yes, existing debts would be paid off rather quickly. Unless the banks got the government to declare bank holidays and other devices so they wouldn't go bankrupt. Oh, and interest rates w
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
Right. So how is that any different from the current system?
The thing is, the poor--by definition--have no wealth to destroy.
In the modern world, when the government starts printing money
Ever tried eating $1M worth of bread a year? ;-) (Score:2)
Not really, because a major part of that $1M is spent not on the same things that poor man's $25K would be spent, right? Even assuming that one actually burns through $1M a year in personal consumption (easier than I thought, only $2739/day
Paul B.
Re:Ever tried eating $1M worth of bread a year? ;- (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
US GDP 2001: $10 Trillion
US GDP 1990: $6 Trillion
Finding 3/4ths of the national GDP to give away seems, oh, a little optimistic.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
The premise of the article is that robots are producing massive amounts of goods, and that the majority of country will see a reduction in buying power. This is the basic recipe for deflation on a huge scale. Given that, while giving $25,000 to everyone will create large inflationary trends, it should be offset by the deflationary environment created by the robots. (ie: no $500 bread)
If you accept that you don't need your country to advance anymore, and machines are covering the basics for you then y
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:4, Informative)
The demand/supply would still be the same (unless it were to rise so much as to bancrupt businesses, which I assume you won't let happen), so prices would remain the same.
The obvious proof : a lot of countries have minimum wages (a lot) higher than the us, and their economy didn't collapse.
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
Some jobs may be absolutely necessary to run the business. Others may be optional. I will buy more CDs at $10 than I will at $20. I will tend to hire more workers at a lower price than a higher one.
When a
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
If the government starts printing lots of money to cover a big cash payment to millions of people inflation would run wild.
There have been countries that printed more currency to cover government expenses. What happened is that the value of their money went down compaired to other countries money.
A country's paper money must be balanced against something. When we were on the gold standard it was gold. I don't know what the US balances it's paper money against now. Maybe GNP? Others ma
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:1)
blow their wad on plasma tvs? (Score:2)
Re:Almost insightful.. (Score:2)
Not exactly, though a price increase could be expected in some segments of the economy. Others would stay about the same. (For example, it's a good bet that most minimum wage earners won't be buying a learjet or any sort of heavy equipment, even at $20 an hour).
It would do two things. Jobs that could be effectively exported would be, those that can't (McSlaves for example, on-site construction for another) would be automated at a greater rate. A machine that was too expensive compared to a $6/hr. worker m