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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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: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.
Re:Redistribution and largesse (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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:4, Interesting)
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: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.