How are you going to give all those people meaningful work and adequate incomes?

[Mainecoons]

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and hopefully stimulate a troll-free discussion of a mega-trend and what to do about it.

The Megatrend is this: Fewer and fewer hands needed to do the work of feeding, clothing and providing material goods. I am reminded of an old story about Henry Ford and Walter Reuther looking at Henry's new assembly line which drastically cut the need for labor in making cars. Henry said something to the effect of, "who you going to get in your union, Walter?" Walter allegedly responded with something like "Who you going to sell cars to, Henry?"

Now obviously, neither of them anticipated the explosion in demand for cars that made both for huge jumps in car sales and the labor to make them. But the point was a good one and very applicable to these times.

We've looked at this question "productivity increases" are really all about less labor to make more stuff or provide more services, how do you keep enough people working to have the demand for those products and services?

It is pretty obvious that the demand is flattening and even falling in the developed world. At the same time, automation marches on. In capital intensive industries, it is the capital that is making the money, not the labor. Even when the pay is good, there's just a lot less of it.

And the pay ain't so hot in many, many places because there is way too much surplus labor. Indeed, aggregate hourly earnings are falling steadily here and in Europe.

The liberals think you can address this by turning half the nation into welfare dependents. The right wingers think you can fix it by unrestrained capitalism and trying to push demand with tax cuts. Neither is working, obviously, because we're dealing with a core structural change in the labor market.

As Reuther pointed out, at some point this is a no win game for the capitalists as there isn't enough purchasing power out there to keep the goods and services flowing.

In reality, we could do very well with half as many people on the planet living a lot better than most do now.

What say you, the members of this group who actually think about this stuff and don't get caught in stupid partisan hacksmanship?

[Peter1469]

When I was in Iraq we were brain storming over contracts to assist the locals. We decided that improving the roads was a good idea. The initial reaction was to get typical US equipment to do the work. I suggested that older methods would employ more Iraqis. Employed Iraqis have less time to plant road side bombs.....

[Calypso Jones]

did they take that very good advice?

[Chris]

I think you leave out that the increased efficiency ("productivity increases") as a result of innovation would naturally lead to decreased prices in a competitive market, that while manufacturing is down information technology is up, that in developed countries population is in decline, that wealth is not divided up into smaller and smaller chunks but generated by capitalism.

Ford, iirc, paid his workers enough so they could afford to buy the cars they made.

[Peter1469]

did they take that very good advice?
Yes, we had tons of Iraqi males with shovels making roads the old fashioned way. It employed lots of people. But it was slow.

[Mainecoons]

Chris, it is obviously not working that way. Higher efficiency isn't lowering prices or raising pay for the few who still have jobs.

That's the point.

[Ivan88]

992 Khadafi was providing adequate incomes. We could ask him.

993 Oh, sorry we killed him and the country of Libya.

We worried about high gasoline prices, when Saddam Hussein was selling gas for 5 cents a gallon, and who offered America all it wants at the cost of production. What did the genius USers do? They destroyed him and Iraq.

Seems we have a real talent for destroying anything that could benefit us.

http://mysite.verizon.net/ress8ouv/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/historyofusa.JPG

[Ivan88]

994Cure for the economic defecit!

Change the dollar to pounds, and change the defecit to fecits.

“Dr. F. H. King wrote an interesting book, published in 1910 titled Farmers of Forty Centuries.11 (http://www.weblife.org/humanure/references.html#4_11) Dr. King (D.Sc.) was a former chief of the Division of Soil Management of the US Department of Agriculture

using Dr. King's figures, the US population today produces approximately 228,125,000,000 pounds of fecal material annually. That's 228 billion pounds. You could call that the really Gross National Product.”
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/chapter4_2.html www.jenkinspublishing.com (http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/)

[Chris]

Agree, it's not working that way. But I would argue it's not working that way because government (social democracy) is trying to manage capitalism through taxation and regulation, the social and corporate welfare of crony capitalism. The managed market is not the free market.

Pre-emptively, I'm not here arguing for no government, just that it should protect rights and not manage them from the left or the right.

If that means a drop in demand, a drop in production, a drop in pay, so be it, it's a natural adjustment from housing, finance and even government bubbles bursting.

[Chris]

994Cure for the economic defecit!

Change the dollar to pounds, and change the defecit to fecits.

“Dr. F. H. King wrote an interesting book, published in 1910 titled Farmers of Forty Centuries.11 (http://www.weblife.org/humanure/references.html#4_11) Dr. King (D.Sc.) was a former chief of the Division of Soil Management of the US Department of Agriculture

using Dr. King's figures, the US population today produces approximately 228,125,000,000 pounds of fecal material annually. That's 228 billion pounds. You could call that the really Gross National Product.”
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/chapter4_2.html www.jenkinspublishing.com (http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/)

@ivan88, this is a warning, see rule #9: "Other Discussions are for more serious discussion and stricter moderation. The rules apply but, on the positive side, we will also require that all posts make a contribution be it information, question or argumentation, and on the negative side we will not allow trolling, inflammatory remarks, personal attacks, or off-topic comments."

[Ivan88]

@ivan88, this is a warning, see rule #9: "Other Discussions are for more serious discussion and stricter moderation. The rules apply but, on the positive side, we will also require that all posts make a contribution be it information, question or argumentation, and on the negative side we will not allow trolling, inflammatory remarks, personal attacks, or off-topic comments."

So solly, You no tolerate humor in a thread on our current economic insanity. I no more post on this thread.
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/images/girdlok.jpg

[Chris]

ivan88, that's right, thread banned.

[Carygrant]

I think you leave out that the increased efficiency ("productivity increases") as a result of innovation would naturally lead to decreased prices in a competitive market, that while manufacturing is down information technology is up, that in developed countries population is in decline, that wealth is not divided up into smaller and smaller chunks but generated by capitalism.

Ford, iirc, paid his workers enough so they could afford to buy the cars they made.

What a light , humorous reply to a light humorous subject .
I bet the natives would love lessons from Uncle Chris

[Chris]

What a light , humorous reply to a light humorous subject .
I bet the natives would love lessons from Uncle Chris

Thread banned. See rule #9.

[Mainecoons]

That's all fine and good to ban the trolls but they have completely disrupted the thread. On a board that I moderate, when this happens, we delete the troll posts as well.

This is what happens when a board over-tolerates trolling as this one does.

Anyway, please clean up my thread by deleting all Ivan's and Cary's crap. Thanks.

[Mister D]

That's all fine and good to ban the trolls but they have completely disrupted the thread. On a board that I moderate, when this happens, we delete the troll posts as well.

This is what happens when a board over-tolerates trolling as this one does.

Anyway, please clean up my thread by deleting all Ivan's and Cary's crap. Thanks.

I was thinking the same thing a few days ago. Deleting that garage would e a good idea.

[Ranger]

Couldn't we just have higher income pay more so that other companys can pay there workers more because they have government money support.