SargeK, you make some very good points. As a country we need to rethink how we do some things. Technological progress is going to inevitably make it so that fewer and fewer workers are required to produce more than enough goods and services that the population can consume. That is not necessarily a bad thing. But if certain things aren’t addressed it could potentially be very bad indeed.
Currently we have a society where a job is required to pay for a person’s needs, i.e. food, shelter, medicine, etc. What happens to a society where technology creates a situation where it is nearly impossible to break into the job market? More and better education is certainly one item that will help make people more employable. But you know as well as I do that not everyone is cut out to perform jobs that require a master’s degree or a PhD, heck or even a bachelor’s degree.
So do you leave those people out on the streets to starve and fend for themselves in a black market economy? If you want a french-style revolution then sure. Or do you rearrange your economy before that happens so that the vastly increased wealth provided by technological change is able to be more equitably shared so that families aren’t required to steal or engage in other illegal activities just in order to live? I’m not advocating putting in a pay ceiling or “from each, blah, blah, blah” but there has to be a way to go forward that doesn’t put the majority of the country in the poor house.
I remember reading articles and stories years ago about how as technology progressed society as a whole would become richer and everyone would have more leisure, etc. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be playing out. Instead we are seeing a return to s feudalistic type society and I can’t see that ending in a good way.
No it won’t end well if we give in to completely unfettered cannibalistic forms of capitalism. We can and must insulate ourselves to the degree possible from unfair foreign labor competition. And I don’t mean the kind of union feather-bedding that the likes of the USW and UAW have become notorious for. But it won’t end any better if we give in to unfettered, cannabalistic government either.
Free trade has to be fair trade. When nations engage in subsidizing industries to provide a loss-leader and rub out the competition, that is unfair. When domestic employers hire illegals, which helps destroy wage structures for the less skilled here, that is unfair. When we turn a blind eye to the use of prison and slave labor, and wanton environmental destruction, that is unfair.
But why is a bad thing for people to have to perform productive work to get the things they need? When a person is truly incapable of work, i.e. truly disabled or elderly, then yes we need a social safety net. When a person has temporary circumstances that leave them without support, they should be supported. But for a limited time. Nothing motivates like the wolf nipping at your heals. No able bodied person should be able to live comfortably or even tolerably on the dole for very long. I believe there is one immutable economic law - when you pay for something, you tend to get more of it. On the social disfunction side, we pay for single motherhood, we pay for unemployment, we pay for disability and we have it all in spades. More people on disability now than ever, more people on food stamps, more children in single-parent households (the single greatest predictive factor of childhood poverty).
We have vast numbers of people who simply have gotten out of the habit of work. Look at the labor force participation rate We have created a safety net that is so generous that it is a disincentive to work. I don’t need a government study to tell me that. My own ears have heard a chorus of “I can get more on (unemployment, disability, whatever) than I do here.” And if the individual plays the system right, they can indeed.
Thanks to the crash of 2008 and the disastrous policies of the Obeyme administration that have deepened the hole, we have now put more people on the other end of the see-saw. We have crossed the tipping point between makers and takers, and the takers now demonstrably outnumber the makers. At the margins, makers are choosing to become takers. Many makers are getting out of the game (’going Galt’) because they see their efforts being met with threats of confiscation.
I understand your concern for the less skilled and less gifted. But there is, always has been, and always will be a tension and an oscillation between the two sides of the see-saw. Give too much to either side and and it tips out of balance.
But the one factor we haven’t dicussed is becoming the weightiest of all - the size and power of government and its involvement in and interference with business. We are rapidly losing the battle of global economic competition due in large part to the size and burden of our bureaucracy. Our rates of taxation and the economic burden of paperwork compliance are exceeding those of explicitly socialist countries. Half of the top ten wealthiest counties in the country are those contiguous to the nation’s capital. Talk about your top quintile - how many federal employees now make six figures? Cronyism and favoritism are rampant. Inordinate sums are spent to influence government to use its powers to aid or destroy one business entity or segment or another. Government and political influence is now the chief determinant, not market forces, in too many economic sectors.