Manufacturing Jobs On Decline Around the World (ampproject.org)

Reader Koreantoast writes: The New York Times posted an interesting thought piece (paywalled, this link could help) on the changing nature of manufacturing globally and the impact it has on modern politics and economic development. Although manufacturing productivity has jumped tremendously over the last several decades, the overall global pool of manufacturing jobs is shrinking as automation and new industrial technologies has increased the production and supply of manufactured goods with fewer people at a rate faster than global demand can absorb. The analogy is the agricultural revolution of the last several centuries where greater amounts of food are being produced by fewer and fewer farmers, displacing many of them. How will industrialized nations manage the growing number of displaced, blue collar labor? Bigger impact globally is that the shrinking pool of manufacturing jobs globally is closing the traditional route of export-oriented manufacturing economy that many nations, particularly in East Asia, were able to use to lift their nations out of poverty. What happens to those nations that missed the boat?"The likelihood that we will get a manufacturing recovery is close to nil," Professor Stiglitz said. "We are more likely to have a smaller share of a shrinking pie."

Comments

Only one way

[fustakrakich]

You have to start giving stuff away.

Re:Only one way

[MightyMartian]

No, you begin looking at a living wage. After all, whether it's machines building the goods or people, the manufacturer, distributor and retailer are all being taxed, and those taxes should still go to support the society at large.

Re:Only one way

[fustakrakich]

No, you begin looking at a living wage.

What I said... same difference.

Re:Only one way

[ArmoredDragon]

Some stuff practically is given away already, for example, promotional merchandise (i.e. t-shirts, usb drives.)

I think the only thing that will truly go away is menial jobs. Farming was the original menial job for thousands of years, and it got replaced by factory work only a century ago (and before any hair splitters descend on that, note I'm referring to the general migration away from farm work and towards factory work, not necessarily when factories first came around.) If factory work goes away and is replaced with something else, then not much has changed in the grand scheme of things.

It also occurs to me that the service industry is outgrowing everything else. The service industry includes not only white collar work, but plenty of blue collar jobs such as plumbing, hvac, construction, etc. In fact, if automation really does take over, then the service industry will be all that remains, only in the case of factories, the line workers are replaced by people servicing the automated systems. Furthermore, the breadth and depth of services continues to grow.

Going back to my first sentence, when promotional merchandise is given away, what are they almost always trying to promote? A service.

Re:Only one way

[mspohr]

You start looking at a universal basic income.
If their are not enough jobs, you need to ensure that everyone can afford food, housing and health care even if they don't have a job.

Re:Only one way

[PopeRatzo]

You start looking at a universal basic income.
If their are not enough jobs, you need to ensure that everyone can afford food, housing and health care even if they don't have a job.

+1 Insightful.

If you don't want to live in the equivalent of a third world country, where most people are dirt poor and living on the street and a very few are fabulously wealthy, you better start learning to live with a vastly expanded welfare state.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because that's worked so well in Venezuela.

Re:Only one way

[MightyMartian]

Well, with most Libertarians being grumpy aging men, I'd say the time for a basic living wage is likely to become a reality. I know they'll talk about the theft of "their" money (as if, somehow, they don't have some debt to the societies in which they live), and they'll continue to ruin conservative parties the world over for a few more years, but there's just simply no way to jive increased mechanization with supporting the populace that doesn't involve making sure the necessities are covered to allow people to pursue their fortunes in other ways.

Who knows, maybe Roddenberry's view of the future isn't as farfetched as even I thought a few years ago.

Re:Only one way

[fustakrakich]

I was thinking a bit more basic than that, but my wording didn't seem to appeal to the moderators. Apparently they weren't as clear and simple as intended. Price reductions need to match cost reductions. By "cost", I mean human effort.

Re:Only one way

[MightyMartian]

And as automation increases, even the ten guys that polish the gears will ultimately be replaced. One can well imagine in a century or two that factories may be entirely automated.

Re:Only one way

[rahvin112]

Every time in the past that they mechanized a factory (think the robots that replaced welders on the auto assembly lines) they traded 10 rotten low pay jobs for one to two very good high payed job servicing the robot, another Electrician slot and a few other higher paid jobs Keeping the robots going.

Maybe they will make Robot's that can service other Robots some day but that time isn't here and the technicians that do that work are very high paid because the work is complex and the knowledge required extensive. There is no question that the number of people involved in assembling a single car is way down from the early days but the positions that replaced those jobs are higher paid, higher skill and often jobs computers (robots) can't do.

Re:Only one way

[Alwin Henseler]

I think the only thing that will truly go away is menial jobs.

Excellent! No more grinding in World of Warcraft?

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, things like condoms, birth control pills, vasectomies...we must not pay people to stay home and breed.

Re: Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a universal maximum income too

Re:Only one way

[fyngyrz]

Well, with most Libertarians being grumpy aging men

Guilty.

But the only parts of libertarian thought I consider valuable are the bits that say no one has any justification in interfering with the personal and consensual choices of others with regard to non-macroeconomic and non-contractual behaviors. The rest is, as far as I'm concerned, bunk.

All for Basic Income. Furthermore, I see it as inevitable. The various attempts at analysis in the context of the type of economy we have now are, IMHO, missing the core issue by a very wide margin: when goods are available without your labor, you will not be laboring. Basic Income looks squarely at this inevitability and suggests a means to address it.

Underneath it all, there is a quickly eroding relationship between work and a happy life. Used to be you had to sweep the hearth with a broom. You had to make the broom, too. And there was every reason to look upon this as both worthy and fulfilling. Because it was necessary. Then others, much more efficiently, made the broom. Then came vacuum cleaners. Then came the Roomba and brethren. This is the path. This is not the end of the path. Trying to consider the issue as if the path stops here breaks any analysis at the starting line. The same thing will apply, and in the same ways, to truck driving, serving food, maid/butler roles, manufacturing, farming... the path will go on until there is no material need left to automate.

I do not, and I suspect few others do either, regret the loss of having to sweep the floor. I will not regret not having to clean the catbox, not having to mow the lawn, not having to shop, etc. There will be no existential crisis in my home due to increasing automation of labor. There will be no guilt when I employ my wholly-machine-made-widgetry, although if the capitalist-fixated manage to derail Basic Income and all suitable stand-ins for that economic functionality, I will certainly feel bad for the people they have screwed out of a very bright future.

I'm pro-personal and consensual choice, and wish to hell there was a decent formal mechanism to determine "informed" to back those concepts up. The future, indeed, seems to me to call loudly and obviously for shades. But that doesn't mean I'm not grumpy. Oh, I'm damn grumpy. :)

Re:Only one way

[losfromla]

Read "Rise of the Robots". Robots in a short time will be able to do the most complex jobs. Robots (by the book's definition) include machines that think, even if disembodied. All jobs can and soon will be done by robots. The book readily dismantles most/all arguments to the contrary. It will be a very dark future (like the movie Ellysium) if we don't start to migrate to a Universal Basic Income, as suggested above. The book discusses that as well.

Re:Only one way

[Sir_Eptishous]

Why is this modded Troll?
He's right.

Re:Only one way

[MightyMartian]

I don't think a basic living wage can be stopped in the long run. In the short term it will be blocked, but sooner or later it will have to happen. It's unavoidable. We started down this road with the invention of the spinning frame in 1760, and I suspect, even then, the more farseeing individuals knew that spinners were just at the forefront of those whose occupations would be relegated to the dustbin of history.

There's no going back. It's been 250 years of increasing mechanization, and it's an unstoppable train.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

It also occurs to me that the service industry is outgrowing everything else.

Only because of the employers cutting everyone to 30 hours/wk so they don't have to negotiate (note: not pay for, but you won't see a lying Republican tell you that about the ACA) affordable insurance for their employees. So yeah, hiring 4 employees where previously you hired 3, the sector is "growing" like gangbusters.

Once the $15/hr minimum wage hits, you better believe companies will start figuring out how to automate those jobs too.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did /. become a hiding place for so many socialist douchebags ?

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they will make Robot's that can service other Robots some day but that time isn't here and the technicians that do that work are very high paid because the work is complex and the knowledge required extensive.

Wow, just look at all those computer technicians wearing labcoats and gloves!
Oh wait, technology got standardized to reduce both production and usage costs.

Re:Only one way

[fyngyrz]

Agreed. Also, not only unstoppable, but also recently speeding up a great deal.

I expect to live to see either a solution or a huge mess (or both.) And I'm more-or-less 60 years old already.

Re:Only one way

[Sir_Eptishous]

The really stunning thing is that there are many here on /., actually I would say a majority, who "can't see the forest for the trees" when it comes to where labor and jobs are going.
They are going away...

It will be a few decades, perhaps 30 to 50 years, when human labor of any kind will be almost completely replaced by, as Ford summarizes, "robots".
Who will pay taxes?
Who will decide who gets a UBI?
How will society deal with millions of unemployed?
How will human society over time come to terms to becoming, in effect, the "pets" of a larger machine state that cares for us?
How will the rules of robot warfare be worked out?
Who will maintain policies on what robots can and can't do?
How much decision making of all sorts will be given over to algorithms and "AI"?
etc, etc...

Re:Only one way

[gweihir]

There really is no long-term alternative. Of course, it is a very un-American thing to do, so do not expect it anytime soon.

Re:Only one way

[gweihir]

Really no way around that.

Re:Only one way

[gweihir]

Very, very insightful. I really like the example about the broom having been had to be made by its user. Of course, I still like to make things that I could just buy, and enjoy the pleasure afterwards. As to capitalists, I think the alternatives are a reasonable basic income you can actually live off decently, or a hellish welfare-state where nobody has enough to life and everybody has too much do die and personal freedoms are essentially gone.

Re: Only one way

[mspohr]

The greatest advance for the US economy and expansion of the middle class was in the 50s and 60s when the top income tax bracket was 90%. That was pretty effective in putting a limit on income and providing government with sufficient funds for infrastructure, etc.

Re:Only one way

[MightyMartian]

The US is a lot more adaptable than even many of its citizens give it credit for. When it was founded, the Industrial Revolution had barely begun, and large swathes of its population were still involved in agrarian or home manufacturing, much as their ancestors had been for thousands of years. By the middle of the 19th century, even in the midst of a brutal civil war, the US was competing with the Old World powers in innovation (the Civil War proved, as wars so often do, to be a boon for technological innovation). By WWII, the US was the pre-eminent world power, and despite all the claims of its waning, the US still remains one of the great economic power houses.

In reality, it has ever been thus. Every generation has its struggles, not just with itself, but with the previous generation, and the transition always leads to moments of revolution. The Baby Boomers may be trying to hang on to their power, and the wealth they accrued, but sooner or later they're going to walk off into the sunset. The Millennials have different priorities, just as the Baby Boomers did in their time.

Re:Only one way

[fyngyrz]

Of course, I still like to make things that I could just buy, and enjoy the pleasure afterwards.

Of course. And the less you have to do, the more you can choose to do.

It'll require many to change their mindset, but I think it's an attractive enough prospect that it won't be a horrifying undertaking for most.

There's the 1% and those who aspire to be like them; but I like to think most people are more interested in being happy and healthy than in excess for its own sake.

That may just be a case of un-called for optimism, though.

Re: Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

That prosperity was in part due to the rest of the world having been mostly bombed to rubble. The resources were mostly controlled by the Americans. Tax rates weren't that big a factor.

Re:Only one way

[fustakrakich]

And the less you have to do, the more you can choose to do.

Watch out. There's going to be a lot of bad play writing out there. You are going to miss the gatekeepers

Re:Only one way

[fyngyrz]

They can't make me watch. :)

Re:Only one way

[gcswt]

With a basic income, you'll eventually get to a situation where too few people actually run the machine of society. That makes society extremely unstable in the long run. In the short term, it will feel okay and seem okay, but it will only take one of many possible calamities to tear down such a society into nothing. What we are seeing in this "information age" is that brains are more valuable than brawn. A basic income makes sense only if coupled with mandatory education. Paying people simply for existing is an economic and cultural time bomb. Those who are able did not commit some form of "Original Sin" to those that are unable. Money spent needs to be an investment for the economics to make any sense.

Re:Only one way

[fustakrakich]

But you still have to sift through them to find the good shit, or pay someone else to. The publishing industry probably won't go away. Certainly the critics won't.

Re: Only one way

[ArmoredDragon]

Precisely!

Re: Only one way

[ArmoredDragon]

That's why it's probably best that politicians don't price labour out of the market. I think $15 an hour is doing exactly that. There's no escaping the fact that it's a global economy now, and even if you practice mercantilism, that's still not going to increase your exports, and in fact reduces them, which is bad because economies like ours cannot sustain themselves with declining exports.

Re:Only one way

[Solandri]

The problem is an income isn't something you can just assign willy nilly. Incomes, currency value, and productivity are all interconnected. Incomes naturally try to align with each worker's productivity (or what he can claim to be his productivity in the case of managers and scam artists). So if someone decides to quit working and live off a basic income, that will cause a shift in the value of currency to make his basic income try to match his productivity (zero).* To make it work, you need to either fix prices (which ruins your economy). Or decouple the basic income from your currency. e.g. Anyone who needs it drops by the local food distribution center and picks up a week's worth of standard grocery rations, thus bypassing currency as an intermediary in your basic income.

* Imagine a vastly simplified economy of 100 people where the only good produced and consumed is milk. Average income is $30k/yr and each person on average produces 10,000 gallons of milk. Total productivity for this country is thus 1 million gallons of milk/yr, and total income is $3 million/yr.. The price of milk is thus $3/gal. And each person buys (consumes) 10,000 gallons of milk/yr.

You decide each person needs a minimum 5,000 gallons/yr of milk to live, so you implement a basic income of $15k/yr. Say 50 of the people become bums - quit working and start living off the basic income. Total income drops to 50*$15k + 50*$30k = $2.25 million/yr. Total milk production drops to 500,000 gallons/yr, or 5000 gallons per capita. This causes the price of milk to rise to $4.50/gal - enough for your basic income to buy only 3333 gallons/yr of milk.

If you resist the urge to break the economy by implementing price controls, milk producing companies are now making more money per gallon sold. Consequently they can pay their workers more (each employee is still producing 10,000 gallons/yr). The wage of a worker thus increases from $30k/yr to $45k/yr. Total income is now 50*$15k + 50*$45k = $3 million/yr, while milk production stays at 500,000 gallons/yr. The price of milk is now $6/gal, reducing the purchasing power of your basic income to 2500 gallons/yr of milk

And so on. By the 10th iteration a working person's income is $180k and the basic income buys only 769 gallons/yr. By the 100th iteration a working person's income is $1.515 million, and the basic income only buys 98 gallons/yr. The series tries to equalize at a point where each person's income matches their productivity. In other words a basic income doesn't work - the value of the basic income tends towards the productivity of the people receiving it. If their average productivity is zero, the value of the basic income trends towards zero (the series is divergent). If their average productivity is 10% that of a full worker, the value of the basic income tends towards 10% that of the full worker. etc. The value of a basic income doesn't stay at the value you originally assigned it if you try to allocate it in currency.

This is what makes a market economy work. Incomes naturally try to gravitate towards whatever value people assign to your work productivity. Prices naturally tend to gravitate towards whatever value people assign to the product * their ability to pay. If you try to pretend the market doesn't work and arbitrarily set an income which doesn't match productivity, the market just pivots around that fixed point and adjusts currency values and other incomes to "correct" your "mistake". That's not to say there aren't ways around it (like the food distribution center idea I mentioned). It's just that implementing a basic income without ruining the economy involves a lot more complexity than just "pay people a basic income."

Re:Only one way

[quintessencesluglord]

Adding-

In politics, there are no perfect answers. It is a question of compromise, and plotting the what seems to be the best path towards ideals from the numerous paths available.

While the "libertarian" argument against BI seems to consist of mostly taxes are theft (unless they support things I support) and an over-reliance on the government, which leads to increased government power.

For BI, if everyone is essentially getting the same, that reduces government power, as they lose the authority to pick winners and losers from the public trust. Can't pander to certain groups for increased benefits (such is commonly done with the elderly). Can't promise any increases unless it goes to everyone. That is a very libertarian argument at reducing the influence of government (plus getting rid of entire agencies that oversee the various programs. You've just reduced the size of government tremendously).

With regards to taxation, while overall taxes will probably increase, since the bulk of taxes goes directly to the population, that leaves little room for government largesse in terms of subsidies, pet programs, and other attempts to curry favor. The money simply isn't there.

I invite libertarians to look carefully at cost/benefit of BI in terms of overall goals, and especially means to achieve those goals through other means (it's not like libertarianism has caught fire with the public at large). If there is a better way forward, I'd certainly like to hear it.

Re:Only one way

[fyngyrz]

With a basic income, you'll eventually get to a situation where too few people actually run the machine of society. That makes society extremely unstable in the long run.

Doesn't necessarily follow. If automation can run one thing, it can run another. One of those things may well be "society." Just a question of how long it take to get there.

Lard knows people don't do a very good job of running society. This one, anyway.

Also, in the experiments that have been run so far, people do not tend to choose to stop working; that turns out to be a very small segment. Check out the various BI experiment tats. I just saw some interesting ones the other day, but I can't remember where. Shouldn't be too hard to find if you're really interested.

Re:Only one way

[fyngyrz]

But do I, really? Or... could I just choose to do something else?

I think I can. :)

Re:Only one way

[phantomfive]

Most of the labor jobs are already gone. We are a service oriented economy now.

Re:Only one way

[mcswell]

I believe this theme has been explored in SciFi (Elysium?), and while the Fi in SciFi stands for "Fiction", I think it brings up legitimate concerns.

A post-manufacturing (at least by humans) world is the backdrop of Stanislaw Lem's "Return from the Stars" = Powrót z gwiazd (ok, I copy-pasted that from the wikipedia). The people seem very busy, but it's not clear what they do.

Re: Only one way

[RightwingNutjob]

Have you ever been on a factory floor? I'm pretty sure from the way you talk about it, the answer is no. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Re:Only one way

[Grishnakh]

Well, with most Libertarians being grumpy aging men, I'd say the time for a basic living wage is likely to become a reality.

Really?

I thought a bunch of them were 20-somethings who think they're smarter than everyone else. Plus some middle-aged ones who never outgrew that mentality and their love of Ayn Rand.

I'll go ahead and admit I followed this philosophy when I was around 18. Luckily, I got wiser and more mature as I aged.

Re:Only one way

[Grishnakh]

But the only parts of libertarian thought I consider valuable are the bits that say no one has any justification in interfering with the personal and consensual choices of others with regard to non-macroeconomic and non-contractual behaviors. The rest is, as far as I'm concerned, bunk.

It sounds like you're talking about social versus economic libertarianism. They're really two different animals. I'm a pretty big believer in social libertarianism myself, but there's a pretty good portion of the left ("liberals") who believe the same thing, they just don't call themselves "libertarians". (BTW, these aren't the same liberals who believe in "microaggressions", "safe spaces", that speech which offends someone should be banned, etc.) Social libertarianism is pretty simple: (non-economic) laws shouldn't be based on morality or religion, and only based on whether an action abridges someone's rights, so basically don't ban something unless it's affecting someone else. So (adult) sexuality for instance can't be regulated here, and you probably won't find any liberals (including the "safe spaces" ones) who would disagree with this notion. But you can also make a case that environmental regulation is justified because we all breathe the same air and are affected by pollution.

It's the economic part where the liberals and the libertarians diverge, since (economic) libertarians don't believe in almost any government regulation of industry or commerce.

I will not regret not having to clean the catbox, not having to mow the lawn, not having to shop, etc

"will not"???
Here's your litter box. It's a little pricey, but accept nothing less; all the other automated boxes suck. This one is fantastic.
There's robotic lawn mowers out there too, but those are a lot more money than this admittedly expensive litter box; it's understandable if you're not ready to shell out $1500 for a Robomow, or for larger lawns a $4500 LawnBott. But they're here.

However, I can't see people ever giving up shopping. It's not that easy to "browse" on a computer screen, and you certainly can't touch and feel things or try clothes on remotely (we don't have holodecks yet, those aren't coming until the 24th Century; the 23rd Century ones suck and are visual-only). The whole way a lot of small shops survive in artsy districts is that people go there to just browse around and look at stuff, without any idea of what they're looking for, just to see what suits their whimsy. That's not going to go away, though more and more stuff is showing up online.

Re:Only one way

[roman_mir]

I think not. I think you do not turn people into slaves of a system, where they are forced to live by rules that are imposed upon them as a payment for this idea of 'basic income'. I think you remove rules and taxes, allowing people to build their own economies without government interference. I am not interested in being a welfare recipient, being subsidised by anybody to live my life on other people's dime. I prefer to run my own business and make my own decisions on how to feed myself and my family.

AFAIC those who are not producing anything to pay for their consumption are living on borrowed time and money, free cheese is found in a mouse trap. Those who supply them with food, energy, etc., are not going to do it for nothing at all, they will have complete and total control of people's lives and behaviours, no fucking way, it's better not to live at all than to live that way.

Re:Only one way

[dryeo]

The few experiments (not very good as the people getting a basic income were surrounded by people who didn't) showed that the main changes were mothers taking more time from work to raise a family and young people pursuing more education rather then leaving school to work. Education will always lead to more opportunities.
In a world with a basic income, there will still be work, luxuries, etc and most people will still work.
Would you quit working for a thousand bucks a month?

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

In a world with a basic income, there will still be work, luxuries, etc and most people will still work.

With all the free time people will have, let's hope they spend some of it learning how to compose and hold a half steady shot before uploading those horrible videos.

Re:Only one way

[fustakrakich]

Who controls the British Crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do, we do...

Re:Only one way

[Troed]

I'm libertarian, and I strongly advocate for basic income.

(It's Pirate Party policy in Sweden)

For me it's about innovation. The Swedish game developer and music producing wonder is partly created by the "basic income" we give our students (very cheap student loans, no tuition fees, the loans pay for your living while studying). As far as I can see we'd see even more innovation happen if we guarantee that you can explore your ideas without fear of ending up on the street.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

In politics, there are no perfect answers. It is a question of compromise, and plotting the what seems to be the best path towards ideals from the numerous paths available.

I see you're not in touch with how modern American political parties think.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who supply them with food, energy, etc., are not going to do it for nothing at all, they will have complete and total control of people's lives and behaviours, no fucking way, it's better not to live at all than to live that way.

I bet you use publicly funded infrastructure - roads, water, telecommunications, whatever. So I suppose you're being "controlled".

It'd be easy to avoid using all such public infrastructure but do you avoid using it? Or do you choose not to? And if you won't live in a manner consistent with your principles, why should anyone listen to you?

Re:Only one way

[hendrips]

Since when have libertarians as a group opposed a basic income? I am a libertarian, and I would be ecstatic if a basic income were implemented, provided it were universal and unconditional. I concede that many libertarians may dislike the idea in principle (though I don't), but in practice we are going to have to have some sort of welfare system, and a system centered on a basic income is the best alternative. Currently, welfare in the U.S. is a confusing, bureaucratic hodgepodge of insufficient and inefficient programs, riddled with means-testing, moral judgments, and perverse incentives. Compared to what we have now, an unconditional, universal basic income is a libertarian wet dream.

Re:Only one way

[crunchygranola]

The problem is an income isn't something you can just assign willy nilly. Incomes, currency value, and productivity are all interconnected.

You can assign a basic income, not willy-nilly, but based on actual costs of a decent prevailing standard of living. This is not at all hard to do.

Incomes naturally try to align with each worker's productivity (or what he can claim to be his productivity in the case of managers and scam artists). So if someone decides to quit working and live off a basic income, that will cause a shift in the value of currency to make his basic income try to match his productivity (zero).

Not so, and I thank you for your simple story explaining your position, because it shows clearly why this idea is false under the circumstances being discussed. The problem is increasing numbers of people who are not holding well paying jobs "making milk" but are poor and buy little now. Basic wages increases their income and creates economic activity.

Anyone who needs it drops by the local food distribution center and picks up a week's worth of standard grocery rations, thus bypassing currency as an intermediary in your basic income.

And how does that work for housing, electricity, water, Internet, medical care, or means of transportation? Even the "rationing card" is fiat currency.

Re:Only one way

[crunchygranola]

I'm libertarian, and I strongly advocate for basic income.

Good to hear it. But we should also advocate expanding the capitalistic component of income - wages. We need policies that require (minimum wage) or encourage companies to distribute more money to their employees. This is good for the overall economy, creating more demand, and making it profitable to invest in expansion (not currently the case, corporations are sitting on cash). Call it "capitalist redistribution" - distribute a larger share of revenue to the actual employees that make the company run. What a concept!

Re: Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, the greatest advance in the US economy was after the industrial revolution really got going. There's a reason child labor largely stopped being a thing here, and it's not because some dude made a law.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Currency devaluation will only happen if you:

1). Have a currency backed by a fixed asset (example: gold) and print more of the currency without increasing your holding in the backing asset
2). Have a fiat currency and print more currency than can be justified by your nation's growth in GDP over the printing period

(that's an oversimplification but you get the idea)

UBI won't change the value of a currency on its own. The reality is that there's an economy of trade involving goods, services, and currency between those who still have the ability to provide useful goods and services to humanity (read: those not in need of the UBI). They use a currency backed by a government - let's say USD backed by the United States. You tax or otherwise compel the parties involved in that economic activity to acquire sufficient units of currency that you then distribute to people in need of the UBI - people formerly capable of earning similar amounts of currency through some form of labor. Those receiving help from the UBI would more-or-less buy the same things they used to buy when employed in working-class jobs. If anything, I would expect prices to crash without the UBI as more and more people get pushed out of the labor pool as the market value of their labor approaches $0/hr. The UBI would stabilize prices by permitting them to continue to purchase the things they're buying already, keeping demand fairly even.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, it isn't the 18th century in North America anymore. If you dislike your current surroundings, homesteading is simply not an option. Everything is already staked out, claimed, occupied, and owned.

Whether you try to start your own business or intended to work for another as an employee, when the free market value of your labor is worth effectively $0, you starve and you die. You don't make choices about how you run your business because nobody will fund its creation. Nobody will buy your products or services, whatever those might be. Why? Because, economically, you're worthless. Machines and/or some people that are better at doing whatever it is you intended to do are already serving the demand of all humanity without your help. AND that demand is busy crashing because of people like you who have no ability to participate in market activity thanks to your inability to produce anything of value.

There's already a bunch of "jobs" out there that are nothing more than busywork provided to keep semi-sustainable wages flowing into the pockets of working-class first worlders to provide economic stability and credibility to the politicians who want to be known as "job creators". It's welfare with extra sweat involved.

Re: Only one way

[crunchygranola]

That prosperity was in part due to the rest of the world having been mostly bombed to rubble. The resources were mostly controlled by the Americans. Tax rates weren't that big a factor.

Nonsense (though nonsense that is commonly repeated).

The U.S. economy of the late 1940s through 1970 was not built on selling goods to the rest of the world. As a share of its GDP U.S. exports were pretty stable at around 5% GDP, the same fraction as it had been since the late 19th century. There is no unusual surge in U.S. "supplying the world". Further by 1960 the incomes of West Germany, and other major industrial nations, exceeded pre-war levels - the era of being "bombed to rubble" was over - and yet the U.S. economic surge continued until the early 1970s. U.S. growth during this era was driven by internal growth, and yes, high taxes on high incomes (encouraging investment), but high wages for everyone, was a key driver.

Re: Only one way

[GameboyRMH]

I think it should be done, even if it did indeed lead to a massive decrease in employment. A sub-livable minimum wage is an unorganized form of corporate welfare, the rest of society has to pick up the slack for the underpaid workers one way or another. So end the corporate welfare and let the companies pay for the full price for labor. If it's so high that they switch to robots instead of paying people a livable wage, then it will hasten whatever solution is necessary rather than prolonging the problem.

Re: Only one way

[Richard Dick Head]

You bring up the 50s and 60s and conveniently forget to mention top tax brackets were still sky high throughout the 70s and early 80s, and that certainly didn't help us then. The top tax bracket was 70% until 1982.

The prosperity of the 50s and 60s happened despite the high taxes and inflationary fed policy, which created a fair amount or resource misallocation, started the steady march of offshoring capital that continues today, and led to the dismal long slide until '83.

The whole "blame the rich" thing is totally misplaced bile and is populist fodder to focus the sub-100-IQ crowd on political issues. If someone makes 100x the income you do, they do not consume 100x the resources. A Maserati has the same basic amount of raw materials as a Camry. A Coach purse is essentially the same as a generic Kmart leather bag. They just tend to misallocate their resources, spending $500 for something that should be $50. Since they are never going to be meaningfully productive anyway, its actually better that way, because competing with the rich on the same playing field for resources sucks...ask anybody who lives LA or NYC.

The real problem is misallocated resouces in the broader economy. If house prices are inflating in an insane way, regular people who would otherwise be meaningfully productive, are spending their time doing $5k of repairs to a house and flipping it at a $20k profit, taking much more capital out of the market than the the value they supply. If the fed is pumping money and the stock market has nowhere to go but up, average people will invest their money in these fiat paper resources instead of investing in their own personal infrastructure, such as starting a new business or tackling a potentially profitable project.

When everyone is taking out more capital than the value they're providing (toxic capital flows), the house of cards collapses and you get a recession. Sure you can pump money into the balloon to keep it going, but it needs to come crashing down somehow. These people flipping houses need to lose their arse, and then move on to something more productive. The people "investing" in paper stock ticker need to lose their arse and invest their money into actual infrastructure that will build our economy later.

The reason we're stagnant and not growing is because the fed pumped, the government bailed out, and saved the parasites and their toxic capital flows, and they're still not moving on to building something real. We'll continue to have plunge after plunge with no meaningful recovery until we accept the necessary pain that comes at the bottom of the market cycle to clear the toxic actors out of the system.

Re: Only one way

[mspohr]

Interesting....
I agree that speculators (on houses or stocks) are toxic and not "productive". Wall street is a toxic plague on our economy.
High tax rates did persist until Reagan and the neoliberals took over and since then we have seen inequality skyrocket.
Just a few comments.
We have trillions of dollars in necessary infrastructure investments which have been neglected (bridges, roads, sewers, water, health, education etc.)
Only government invests in infrastructure.
Government needs tax dollars to invest in infrastructure.
Best to tax high income people... that's where the money is.
The only pain for clearing out toxic actors will be to the toxic actors... the rest of us benefit.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard? Inflation has been 0% for the last 30 years because wages drive inflation and wages haven't gone up.

In other news, Bill Gates pays $400 for a head of lettuce. Groceries employ a person specifically to follow him around and change the prices of everything as he walks up since he has more money.

Re: Only one way

[wyHunter]

This isn't true. We switched to a services economy in the late 1960s. The economy of the US from the 1920s through this time WAS built on selling things to the world, though mostly it was munitions in the 1940s - and massive deficit spending.

Re:Only one way

[wyHunter]

This. While China has displaced the US in total manufacturing output the US is still the biggest in advanced manufacturing.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying people to fuck and have babies (which is essentially what will happen) is a bad idea. You think we'll stop giving out welfare after UBI is implemented? Please. "But, but, the UBI isn't enough to feed my 6 kids..."

The reason someone like Trump is popular is that good people have had it with the unfairness all around them. They obey the rules, and are tired of millions of others getting a pass when they misbehave or are irresponsible.

Re:Only one way

[david_thornley]

A UBI doesn't mean people can't try to get into the 1%. It's a guarantee on the low end that has nothing to do with the high end. What the 1% and corporations are going to be annoyed at is that it makes low-end workers more independent. Got a crappy job? You'll have to pay accordingly, because nobody is going to take a low-wage icky job because it's that or starve.

Re:Only one way

[david_thornley]

People want more than a basic income. I'm not quitting my job the day a UBI is established, because I want more money than a UBI will give me. There will always be people willing to do anything that needs to be done; they'll just have to be paid accordingly. You want a clerk at a florist shop? Probably not too expensive, and the clerk will find uses for extra money. The only gotcha is that people will have to be paid decently for crap jobs.

Re:Only one way

[david_thornley]

To answer your questions:

People with income above the UBI will pay taxes. There will be plenty of them.

Every citizen or resident alien gets the UBI, including Bill Gates. That's one of the ways it's much better than welfare programs: all you have to do is determine the number of people in the household, and deposit the amount in their bank accounts. It simplifies things and reduces overhead dramatically.

We already have millions of unemployed, and we'll probably have less human work over time, so we'd have even more millions anyway. With the UBI, we don't have desperate unemployed people.

How did aristocrats come to terms with becoming, in effect, the "pets" of the larger servant class that cared for them? They seemed to cope.

The rules of robot warfare will be worked out by the same sort of international conventions that work out the rules of human warfare.

People will maintain policies on what robots can and can't do. Just because the economy changes a lot doesn't mean we will cease to have politics and governments.

I don't know how much decision making will be given over to algorithms and AI; that will be decided on a case-by-case basis. I will tell you that I'm no longer worried about the machine code my compiler generates, so I've given that over to algorithms. It didn't seem to hurt me.

Re: Only one way

[david_thornley]

Establish a UBI first, then we don't need a minimum wage.

Re:Only one way

[gweihir]

1. UBI is also paid for each child
2. This is not about (un)fairness at all, this is about society not being able to offer jobs to an increasing number of people

Re:Only one way

[gweihir]

Not so difficult. For example, Amazon reviews are pretty good for that. First, discard anything that does not get at least 4 stars on average. Then read a few of the positive reviews _and_ some of the negative ones. Not 100% perfect, but works pretty well.

Re:Only one way

[gweihir]

Indeed. I think that overall this is a very good thing, because even a crappy job should be done well and the worker should be respected for it. What will probably vanish is a lot of unnecessary jobs that primarily are there to annoy people. Anything that has a real purpose, you will find somebody for.

Example: In one of the better restaurants in the city I live, one of the serving staff is actually the heiress to the rather very expensive building the restaurant is in. She apparently just enjoys doing the job well and has no higher ambitions. I think there are a lot of people that want to be useful to society by doing something well and that these people will keep things going in any case.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want to live in the equivalent of a third world country, where most people are dirt poor and living on the street and a very few are fabulously wealthy, you better start learning to live with a vastly expanded welfare state.

That's the usual nonsense we've come to expect from people who call themselves socialists (and usually don't even know the meaning of the word).

A lot of the benefits in other countries (such as Sweden and Denmark) are directly taxed as income or in the form of sales taxes, which means the actual benefits are much lower than the simple-minded would suppose. Further, US citizens are paying themselves for many of the things that the welfare state pays for in other countries, such as medical care, and a wide variety of charities.

As The Globalist points out: "With all net public and net private resources taken into account, the United States spends about 25.6% of its GDP on social purposes. This is the third-highest ratio of social spending to GDP in the OECD. Only France and Belgium devote more resources to social purposes."

In short, huge amounts of money are already being spent on social purposes in the USA.

Further, US citizens send large amounts of private money overseas, to benefit family overseas and to support a wide variety of social causes, which means that the social spending of US citizens is an even higher proportion of GDP, probably more than any other country in the world.

Misguided social policies that don't have the desired effect, massive problems with the legal system (and legal ethics), mismanaged welfare systems, and the effect of deeply entrenched special interest groups combined with a highly corrupt lobbying system, these all result in a state of affairs such that a lot of money spent in the USA doesn't reach the people who need it most.

It's a lot like the problems we have with education in the US: huge amounts of money are being spent with very poor results. Administration sucks up a lot of the money, the seniority system among teachers steals more (without returning proportionate results), and the publish-or-perish system in the universities is probably the worst culprit in terms of money returning poor educational results. Similar problems confound the spending on welfare.

Increasing the size of the welfare state isn't going to help, it will just make a bigger pie to get diverted from those in need. Instead, how we spend our money needs to change, and we need to work on fixing a lot of the laws (starting with the tax laws). That's hard work, of course, which will be bitterly resisted by the special interest groups that are currently gorging themselves from the trough. The socialists, by diverting people from the real issues into superficial solutions that won't work, have made themselves part of the problem, another obstacle to be overcome so we can make things better.

Re:Only one way

[fyngyrz]

Here's your litter box.

We have six adult cats. I looked at that thing, and I just can't see it doing the job that has to be done.

What I was referring to, anyway, was the whole job. Clean, replace, take out, dispose of, sweep the area. Nothing that'll do that yet for any number of cats.

But I do appreciate the pointer. Perhaps some years from now, when attrition has brought down the population.

Mowing: My lawn is a topological nightmare. :)

Re:Only one way

[Grishnakh]

We have six adult cats. I looked at that thing, and I just can't see it doing the job that has to be done.

A single unit might not be enough for 6 cats, that is a bit much. You could try it out though, and keep a standard box nearby if it's not enough or if any of the cats refuse to use it. It's definitely sufficient for 3. Remember, if cleans the litter after every cat, and has a rather large waste drawer, so it doesn't need tending nearly as much as a regular box. The newest version also (IIRC) has a sensor to warn you the drawer is full and won't continue trying to dump the waste in it, like the older versions (watch out for that, that's the fatal flaw of the old version--it makes a nasty mess when this happens).

What I was referring to, anyway, was the whole job. Clean, replace, take out, dispose of, sweep the area. Nothing that'll do that yet for any number of cats.

No, you still have to dispose of the filled bags and sweep yourself. If you have a Roomba in that room, that should take care of the sweeping part. But for now at least, that's the problem with every robot: it'll do all the drudgery for you, but you still have to do the robot maintenance, set-up, etc.

Re:Only one way

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point here is that the total cost of labor to run the plant went down. Just an example, maybe they spent 300k / month for those low paying manufacturing jobs, the highly skilled workers who replace them are individually better paid, but the total cost of labor also went down. Now you're spending 150k / month for robot technicians and electricians, and the other 150k is savings.

obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course there aren't ad many workers in factories. The black people who worked in the factories are now out yelling about how black lives matter. While they're been busy protesting about problems that don't exist, their manufacturing jobs have been replaced by robots and their fast food cashier jobs have been replaced by touch screens.

Re:obviously

[fremsley471]

Really? You're bright enough to read this article, or at least the headline, to type words in, and what you bring to the discussion is supporting Black Lives Matter, i.e. being politically active, is the problem?

Mindless, knee-jerk idiocy. Please depart and leave the discussion to grown-ups.

Re: obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

What have you contributed to the discussion? Oh, wait, that's right... NOTHING! You can disagree with me if you must, but ad hominem doesn't disprove anything I said.

Re:obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Black Lives Matter, i.e. being politically active

I wouldn't consider supporting the so-called "Black Lives Matter" groups as being "politically active".

If there's one thing they've repeatedly shown us, it's that they collectively have a very poor grasp of politics.

First of all, there is their choice of a name for their movement. The name "Black Lives Matter" implies that other lives don't matter. That may not have been what they meant, but that is what they're saying. If they weren't politically dumb, they would've used an inclusive name like "All Lives Matter". All they've managed to do is alienate everyone who doesn't identify as "black".

Second of all, it doesn't help that the movement arose out of the incident in Ferguson. Despite all of the claims that Michael Brown was "innocent", when all of the evidence finally came out in front of the grand jury it became clear that Brown was the aggressor and very much at fault for what happened. The riots that followed were also unjust. So the "Black Lives Matter" movement itself arose out of a very dirty, ugly situation created by somebody who was black, and riots perpetrated mainly by blacks. This has tainted the movement in the minds of many observers.

Third of all, the stunts they've pulled since then haven't been politically effective. Interrupting public speeches being given by politicians, especially ones that are perhaps the most likely to support the "Black Lives Matter" movement, clearly wasn't a good idea. It just made the entire movement look like a bunch of radical extremists.

The whole movement has been utterly amateurish, to the point of being a complete farce! Aside from themselves, nobody takes them seriously at all. That's why I'm hesitant to consider it a political movement. They've shown a total lack of understanding regarding all things political. They've somehow managed to do much, much worse than other inexperienced grassroots movements have.

If there's one thing the greater black community should do right away, it is disown and disavow the "Black Lives Matter" movement. The "Black Lives Matter" movement, like gangsta/thug culture, is extremely harmful to all blacks. They deserve better, and the "Black Lives Matter" protest is clearly not helping.

Re:obviously

[PopeRatzo]

The black people who worked in the factories are now out yelling about how black lives matter.

And white people who worked in the factories are collecting disability and hanging around Trump rallies.

Re:obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that there are a great number of people like you who are only half informed.

While your claims about Brown are accurate the institutional racism leading to the incident was the real fuel for the fire. The people being thrown in jail because of parking tickets they can't pay for with late fees making harder and harder. The fact that police officers have been caught openly talking about it makes it worse.

That you interpret Black lives matter to mean only black lives is another farce. This kind pedantry is unproductive. White people aren't being gunned down by police in near the numbers of black people. So white lives already matter. Black people are being gunned down even more than Latinos. They are clearly being targeted by racists parts of this country and the police fraternity culture only makes it worse as you have what would be good police officers hiding crimes of bad police officers.

I'll also agree Black Lives Matter isn't a political movement but merely calling attention to problem a lot of people was solved because we have a black President. The issue was never solved and blatent racism used to be considered unacceptably rude, we see it on our congressional floor these days though. It almost like a return to the pre-civil rights era. Definitely not as bad as then but rhetoric sure is familiar.

Police are supposed to serve and protect. When you make them the enemy to larger and larger part of the population they can no longer do their very difficult job effectively. That's the major argument for prison reform and legalizing certain drugs to de-escalate the war on drugs which is a complete and utter failure along with waste of tax dollars.

We should not be putting people in jail for stupid reasons. If we are going to continue to then we need to provide a path back to being a productive citizen because it is counter productive leaving them no options after they get out of jail. Why is recidivism such a problem? Because they can't get a job. They even highlighted the problem in Ant-Man its such a well known problem. It doesn't matter that you have a Master's degree in electrical engineering you will still not get a job much less a decent job unless you're lucky enough to come across an understanding employer willing to stick his/her neck out when the majority refuse to.

Re:obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'm hearing out of you is just one excuse after another.

It wasn't "institutional racism" that made Michael Brown rob a convenience store, then physically attack a police officer. It was something Brown did on his own.

And if people can afford a car, plus insurance (they do have that, right?), plus gas, plus repairs, and other costs, then they can afford to pay any parking tickets they receive. If they can't afford parking tickets, then they should be careful about where they park, or at least pay the much smaller parking fees.

And white people and Hispanics don't tend to physically attack police officers, unlike what we saw in the case of Michael Brown or even to some extent in the case of Trayvon Martin, nor do they typically keep waving around knives or fake weapons even after being told to drop them. Not attacking the police is a good way to not be shot by them!

And Obama is just as white as he is black.

Anyone, regardless of skin color, who goes out and commits crimes and attacks police officers, regardless of the reason for doing so, shouldn't be surprised when things go bad for them.

And it's not just blacks who are suffering economically. Many Americans of all skin colors and origins are suffering the exact same problems.

The "Black Lives Matter" movement just encourages such excuses, and this prevents the situation from improving.

Re:obviously

[wyHunter]

It might surprise you, but a lot of black folks seem to be supporting Trump too -- the ones who want to work. And the whites who don't want to work are at Bernie rallies.

Re:obviously

[PopeRatzo]

It might surprise you, but a lot of black folks seem to be supporting Trump too

You know, before you make such a stupid assertion, you ought to check if there's actually any data available that might make you look like a total dope.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...

You will notice that among blacks, Donald Trump's support is shown in this Fox News Poll as being 10%, with a margin of error of 9 points, plus or minus. And that's the HIGHEST he's ever done in such a poll, by about a factor of three.

Re:obviously

[david_thornley]

"Black Lives Matter" is in contrast the the current "Black Lives Really Don't Matter", so I'm fine with that.

Brown really, really sucks as a poster child. Yes, Ferguson was a hell of racial oppression, but that doesn't make Brown anything other than a petty thug. There's lots and lots of black people who were killed just for being black, not for being aggressive. The movement should just stop talking about Brown and talk about kids shot down in cold blood because they had toy guns, blacks who were killed by mistreatment when in custody, that sort of thing.

Transition to post-employment economy

[Anonymous Coward]

As automation drives the cost of manufacturing closer and closer to raw material cost, and as we get better and better at harvesting raw materials, the entire economic model that has driven civilization for the past several hundred years fails. It will likely be replaced with a model that values information, and in particular creative endeavors, above all else. In an ironic twist of fate, humanities majors may be the Gates and Rockefellers of that next era.

Re:Transition to post-employment economy

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be that, or it might be the people who have the most sociopathic/psychopathic traits that take hold, either in government, or just in general. For example, A basic income for people in the US is just not going to happen, and it might be the case that existing programs are cut due to political ideologies. So, even though the pie gets smaller, more people have to reach for a piece in the US in order to survive as other means peter out, or wind up resorting to crime to survive.

What is likely going to happen as manufacturing goes away, will be more police and MRAPs on the street, higher food prices, and a lower quality of life, getting ever lower as Malthus and the Iron Law of Wages tightens its grip.

The only reason why the US and Europe are not serfdoms right now, dates back to the Black Plague and nobles having too few backs to lash/break to get what they want. Now, with populations back up, it is easy to keep control, and technology has made revolution and guerilla warfare impossible as the ultimate counterbalance to repression.

Re:Transition to post-employment economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the tech advance has made it harder, but in the end it's fight or die. I'd imagine that given the choice, there would be plenty willing to fight to stay alive. Even if they get cut down in droves, it's better than starving to death.

I just hope as one last fuck you from the general public to them, the robots get permanently set to skynet mode, so the "important people" get the just rewards they deserve for screwing over society: The loss of what they want the most, power and influence, and the destruction of what they value the most: Themselves.

A new generation...

[fishscene]

Maybe we'll have a new wave/generation of explorers who push the boundaries and find new and interesting things for people to throw money at, both here on Earth and among other planets.

Re:A new generation...

[phantomfive]

In practice, we'll have jobs that seem more and more useless. For example, eventually people might pay each other to clip their nails.

It will recover

[Billly Gates]

As the free market will adjust by lower prices which in turn mean more people can now spend money on more products and it will equalize again as long as we do not do anything about it like government interference.

Also, the world population is increasing at an alarming rate! As poorer countries prosper these new kids will turn into adults and buy more products fullfilling the demand again. Globalization is doing amazing things in China and it is now starting to return the favor of money flowing in the other direction

Re:It will recover

[__aaclcg7560]

Also, the world population is increasing at an alarming rate!

The population will peak in 2050 at 9B people and then start declining as old people outnumbers young people and population growth becomes slower.

http://www.cgdev.org/page/global-demographic-trends

Re:It will recover

[MightyMartian]

There is a very notable phenomena in wealthier societies; and that is that the wealthier a society gets, the less children are produced. I remember reading a book on demographics in the Early Modern Era (ie. the Elizabethan age and later), where the first glimmers of a middle class started to appear in England, and this group had notably lower birth rates than either the lower classes or the nobility. For both the lower classes and the nobility, economics dictated the need for lots of babies due to infant mortality rates and the need for lots of heirs (the lower classes to inherit their parents' crappy jobs and the nobility to assure that estates were passed on). This trend started slow, but as the Middle Class grew as a demographic, and continues to grow the in the Industrialized world, you're seeing overall population levels fall; precipitously in some places. Most industrialized countries have negative population growth, but some, like Japan and Spain, are in serious trouble.

It will repeat itself in the developing world. As living standards in places like Africa, China and India begin to rise, populations will stabilize, and as more people enter their society's middle class, it will slow, and in the long run probably begin a decline. There isn't going to be some sort of infinite growth in population.

Re:It will recover

[Tablizer]

As the free market will adjust by lower prices which in turn mean more people can now spend money on more products and it will equalize again as long as we do not do anything about it like government interference.

The lower manufacturing price likely won't offset the loss of spending money caused by not having a job. Even now, typically less than half the price of manufactured goods is manufacturing itself. If factory bots were 100% efficient, the cost of goods would thus drop to half of what they are now at best, but incomes would be dropping to roughly 1/8 of current salaries.

Something doesn't add up about your theory. The savings is failing to trickle-down to rank and file consumers for some reason. A pipe is clogged somewhere.

Re:It will recover

[losfromla]

The benefits of free markets are a myth. No country has ever climbed the prosperity and technology ladder without heavy government intervention. China is aggressively doing it, it is in Germany's constitution, England lost its advantage when it moved to "free trade", look what's happened to our economy when we followed the idiot economists pushing for free trade. There is an interesting book titled "Free Trade Doesn't Work: What should replace it and why", it covers why government interventions are necessary and desirable regardless the level of industrialization of your particular country.

Re:It will recover

[Sir_Eptishous]

As living standards in places like Africa, China and India begin to rise, populations will stabilize, and as more people enter their society's middle class, it will slow, and in the long run probably begin a decline. There isn't going to be some sort of infinite growth in population.

Thank God!

Re:It will recover

[dcollins]

Is this trolling? It's certainly the most illogical thing I've read online today.

It doesn't matter what the level of demand is if the products are all manufactured by robots. Yes more sales, but no not more jobs.

The whole point of the article is that productivity is up while jobs are falling (like farming before it).

Re:It will recover

[gcswt]

It IS trickling down to consumers in ways that are difficult to measure. The standard of living of an unemployed person in a country such as the United States is FAR better than an unemployed person in a poverty-stricken nation. (often better than an employed individual). There is a lot of wealth we all have simply by existing in such a country. There are also a lot of opportunity to grow in a wealthy nation because you are safe to pursue an education without fear of starvation, warlords, or an oppressive government. Looking at the problem of wealth purely by income is a huge miscalculation. This is why Basic Income is a bit of a magic bullet that won't work by itself. Money is a tool, it isn't a cause of anything by itself. Economic change starts with cultural change.

Re:It will recover

[BarbaraHudson]

Your figures need to be adjusted. Africa is no longer lowering it's birth rate. It's been stuck at 4.5 for a while. This means that world population will continue to grow, and may hit 12 billion by 2100.

Re:It will recover

[gcswt]

It would be far more efficient for a government to assign mates and marriages. To test us early and often to determine exactly what our talents are and of what use we would be to "Society", but that's a monstrous infringement on freedom and free will. Whether a government could run our lives better or worse is irrelevant. It's MY life and only mine and there is not argument you can make to take possession of it.

Re:It will recover

[BarbaraHudson]

African birth rates have stabilized at 4.5 per mother. That means continued growth. Continued rises in life span will also contribute. Welcome the your new 4 horsemen of the apocalypse overlords.

Re:It will recover

[__aaclcg7560]

This means that world population will continue to grow, and may hit 12 billion by 2100.

Maybe, maybe not. The U.N. number for Africa may be in dispute. If Africa stays poor and uneducated, fertility rates will go up. If Africa grows prosperous and education, fertility rates will decline.

Re:It will recover

[Tablizer]

The standard of living of an unemployed person in a country such as the United States is FAR better than an unemployed person in a poverty-stricken nation.

I hardly call that a solid measure of success. That's almost like somebody in the middle ages saying, "At least we know how to heal with leaches sometimes. Sumerians didn't have that knowledge and died more often."

And unemployment is only going to get worse. That's even less consuming over time.

It IS trickling down to consumers in ways that are difficult to measure.

So difficult that nobody can articulate them well, it seems.

Re:It will recover

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing that guarantees that the change in price will have an equivalent change in demand. There is a relationship between the two, but usually not linear. When toothpicks got cheaper, people bought way more of them, but there is a limit to how many toothpicks you need. They kept getting cheaper without any much budge in demand. If manufacturing keeps getting more efficient, you will tend to see that happen to most products.

Manufacturing is also limited by the availability of raw materials, and that can keep the prices high even as the actual act of manufacturing gets cheaper; Copper being a recent example.

Re:It will recover

[sociocapitalist]

As the free market will adjust by lower prices which in turn mean more people can now spend money on more products and it will equalize again as long as we do not do anything about it like government interference.

Also, the world population is increasing at an alarming rate! As poorer countries prosper these new kids will turn into adults and buy more products fullfilling the demand again. Globalization is doing amazing things in China and it is now starting to return the favor of money flowing in the other direction

...and these people will buy products with what money?

The whole point of the article is that the number of jobs is shrinking.

No jobs = no money unless there is welfare / basic living allowance.

Third world countries where there is neither welfare nor basic living allowance and it doesn't matter how cheap things are...no job = no money = starving on the street.

Re:It will recover

[Anonymous Coward]

As poorer countries prosper ...

Prosperity ultimately, comes from consumption of natural resources. If a poor country doesn't charge sufficient taxes, they're subsidizing other (richer) countries. Yes, service economies make money on futures and derivatives but first the country must have a money market and resource/manufacturing growth they can speculate upon. Many countries are poor because these things repeatedly don't happen.

They there's the other end of the spectrum, where the new middle class is buying cars faster than roads are being built. Even though people are surrounded by mod-cons, such consumption results in excessive waste and a lower quality of life.

Re:It will recover

[Anonymous Coward]

... free market will adjust by lower prices ...

Wages rarely decrease nation-wide, mostly because of government interference, so the market can't adjust. That means those who don't receive a wage can't afford to live.

Globalization is doing amazing things in China ...

China has been part of the global economy for over 40 years. The median wage is now high enough to create demand for imported high-tech appliances.

Re:It will recover

[Anonymous Coward]

If they run out of potable water . . .

Re:It will recover

[BarbaraHudson]

Nope - Africa's rate is stuck at 4.5 despite economic and educational improvements.

Re:It will recover

[GameboyRMH]

The economic improvements have all gone to an elite few in Africa, that's why there's been no effect. That's what you get when an economic boom happens at a time of staggering inequality. The US could've suffered the same fate if not for the New Deal policies.

Re:It will recover

[losfromla]

How did you jump from my assertion regarding industrial policy to the government selecting' your mating partner? I'm all for you doing what you want with your life, I was referring to protecting industries from foreign competition. Where you responding to me or someone else? Because on the whole, your entire response is a non-sequitur vis-a-vis responding to the points I made. I guess I can't help but go low and ask: are you paid to troll out FUD and have to insert your drivel wherever there might even be the most tenuous (or none in this case) of connections?

The Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Dystopian future:
Gated communities / businesses / factories / farms for the 2% of population that are producers who clothe and feed the other 98%
The chain of civilization - that where one generation educates and raises the next - is broken, the consumer class becomes uneducable and ghetto-like, but well-fed, housed, and distracted with trinkets.

Re:The Future

[Joe_Dragon]

what about the point where the jail / prison is better then street? And they when the TAX needs to go up on the 1% to pay for that at a much higher cost then a basic income system?

Re:The Future

[Anonymous Coward]

>where the jail / prison is better then street?

Wjat you are forgetting is that jails charge the inmates a per diem.

Re:The Future

[Joe_Dragon]

But the DR is free and if you have nothing then what are they going to do take it out of your $0.13 hr in prison job?

ta ta honkers

[Anonymous Coward]

ur gonna climb the wall and will fall everytime afro man

Re:ta ta honkers

[PopeRatzo]

ur gonna climb the wall and will fall everytime afro man

Trump 2016

Don't make buggy whips in a Car world

[gurps_npc]

It's pretty obvious that most jobs will no longer be in manufacturing, just as most jobs are no longer in agriculture.

This does not in any way affect total jobs available, nor does it affect total good jobs available.

In a post agricultural world, we moved into manufacturing. In a post manufacturing world, we move into services. This is obvious, as it has already begun.

Services include poor jobs - cleaning, blue collar jobs - installing, good blue collar jobs - repair, and white collar jobs - inventing.

Re:Don't make buggy whips in a Car world

[Kjella]

Services include poor jobs - cleaning, blue collar jobs - installing, good blue collar jobs - repair, and white collar jobs - inventing.

Repair is a good job? I've only seen decline as mass production and miniaturization has turned everything from clothes to household gadgets to computers and cell phones turn into things you throw away when they break. Only fixed installations and big ticket items tend to get repaired. And while a few older items were built like a tank a lot of the industrial work and QC also used to be manual and not very consistent, sure the cheapest plastic crap is still flimsy but if you go back to the store and swap for another one it'll be just like the first one. So either you have something that works or you want something else entirely not to have it repaired. And it's something of a negative feedback loop, with so few repairs the volume of parts, availability of tools and skills and so you rather make your product cheaper and harder to repair.

Re: Don't make buggy whips in a Car world

[rsilvergun]

Repair work is long gone. Cheaper to rebuild and recycle. Cleaning and Blue collar jobs require folks with money to hire the workers, but how are you supposed to get money to hire a cleaning lady or a roofer if you're a cleaning lady or roofer yourself? Very few folks have the intellect to invent. It's bloody hard. So what are we gonna do with all these people we don't need? I mean besides let then all die for the 50-100 years it'll take for some new tech to come along and employ them?

Re:Don't make buggy whips in a Car world

[MightyMartian]

Even big ticket items are becoming increasingly modular, so repair often amounts to "pull module out of slot C and replace with new module". I look at the extremes I had to go to in the late 1980s to replace a RAM module as compared to now.

Re: Don't make buggy whips in a Car world

[inode_buddha]

True, repair work is long gone for consumer goods. But industrial/commercial equipment gets rebuilt all the time. No, there isn't enough of that kind of work to make up for the millions of jobs lost since 1980. (I do industrial repair/maintenance for a living)

Re:Don't make buggy whips in a Car world

[drinkypoo]

I look at the extremes I had to go to in the late 1980s to replace a RAM module as compared to now.

You mean pull out a VME board and then slide one back in? Or stick some SIPPs into a Zorro II card and drop it in the slot? Wait, what am I missing?

Re:Don't make buggy whips in a Car world

[david_thornley]

The additional RAM I added to my first computer kept slowly working itself out of the sockets, so I had to plug it back in periodically. That's not something I've had to do with any computer since.

Re:Don't make buggy whips in a Car world

[drinkypoo]

The additional RAM I added to my first computer kept slowly working itself out of the sockets, so I had to plug it back in periodically.

Ah, pin spacing is so hard! I only ever had one machine with a lot of socketed DIPs, a 386DX25 with 8MB of that stuff. Nary a problem, though. It was my first Linux machine, and rock-solid.

Re:Don't make buggy whips in a Car world

[david_thornley]

This was on the "expansion interface" of my original TRS-80 (before they started calling it the Model 1). I didn't have the problem with later computers, although by the time I next added memory to a computer I didn't have those rows of sockets.

Republican solution

[Anonymous Coward]

More tariffs, higher walls, less predicable diplomacy. Then America will be great again!

Re:Republican solution

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget torture and war crimes

Re:Republican solution

[losfromla]

Trump?

Re:Republican solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget tax cuts and repealing ObamaCare.

Re:Republican solution

[rubycodez]

you ape stereotypes

I"m pretty sure the leading Republican candidate is focused on jobs and trade agreements that don't disadvantage the USA

Hilary and Sanders seem rather clueless about the subject. Sanders hasn't held a job for most his life.

And still moe people have more things

[thinkwaitfast]

than they did before.
As a college student in 1990, I could not afford any of this. If I was in grade school now, I could probably find it for free, or if not, make enough money from sweeping up the leaves from a single neighbors lawn to buy it on ebay. It took me mowing close to 200 lawns to afford my first 16kB computer.
Inflation adjusted, an equipped Apple ][ computer cost $10,000 ($3500 in 1980).

Re:And still moe people have more things

[fluffernutter]

Yet it hasn't increased the quality of life one iota.

Re:And still moe people have more things

[Anonymous Coward]

$3500 in 200 lawns is $17/lawn ($50 adjusted for inflation). These days a kid mowing a lawn is lucky to get $20. I know for $20 I can get a whole family of illegals to mow, edge, rake and weed my yard and garden. Sure, the computer costs less now, but people are paid less too.

It's amazing how people can prattle on about how things were back then and how if someone was a hard worker they could have the same things you had. It's even more fun when you tie things to the price of gold: http://www.mybudget360.com/40-...

In 1969, the median salary was $9302, or 265.8oz of gold

In 2010, the median household income (from here) was $51,144, or 43.6oz of gold.

Over the same time that household income decreased to about 1/5th of their 1969 level, housing prices (in terms of gold) dropped to 1/4th of their level.

So no, the same amount of hard work just doesn't cut it anymore, and it's clear that the value of labor is going to keep dropping, with or without attempts to stop it by increasing the minimum wage.

Re:And still moe people have more things

[thinkwaitfast]

True, but it's what people want. There are less costly alternatives.

Re: And still moe people have more things

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably not a good idea to do things that result in that whole family of poor immigrants becoming very familiar with your estate.

Re:And still moe people have more things

[rubycodez]

gold is a volatile industrial and jewelry metal, prices in gold mean nothing. sure, it's "real money" but its value is all over the board.

9300 in 1969 scales to 53,000 in 2010
BUT
2.6 people per household in 2010, 3.14 people in 1970. So about the same amount of money goes to less people in a household!

So per person, we're doing a lot better, especially since more people obviously can afford to HAVE a household.

Re:And still moe people have more things

[Qzukk]

more people obviously can afford to HAVE a household

To misquote Babbage: I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement.

Home ownership is 3rd lowest ever.

Marriage is at an all time low.

Family size is decreasing - YOUR OWN STATS. Meanwhile, Cohabitation is increasing. So are non-sexual roommates.

So please explain what the hell went on in your head that produced the output "more people obviously can afford to HAVE a household", because all signs are pointing the other way.

Re:And still moe people have more things

[rubycodez]

marriage not part of considering a household. guess again.

We were talking of 1970 vs. 2010

62.3% in 1970 vs. 65.1% in 2010.

thanks for playing.

"2010 Census Shows Second Highest Homeownership Rate on Record Despite Largest Decrease since 1940" -- actual headline

FUD for the Dem Pres

[Woldscum]

President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy
Eight years after the financial crisis, unemployment
is at 5 percent, deficits are down and G.D.P.
is growing. Why do so many voters feel
left behind? The president has a theory.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05...

Re:FUD for the Dem Pres

[Tailhook]

The president has a theory.

TD;DR summary; ignorant 'muricans don't appreciate what I've done.

Hopefully Hillary will stick with that view as well.

Re:FUD for the Dem Pres

[drinkypoo]

Unemployment is NOT at 5%. The published unemployment rate is at 5%. Now go look at the labor participation rate. It tells a more accurate story, although even it doesn't tell the whole thing. Does the president have a theory on why he feels a need to lie about unemployment over, and over, and over again?

Re:FUD for the Dem Pres

[Mass Overkiller]

You shouldn't even reply to anyone who says the unemployment rate is 5% they are a lost cause and live in la-la land. The rest of us known that 50% of the population doesn't work for whatever reason, which ultimately is unsustainable.

Re:FUD for the Dem Pres

[rubycodez]

we don't count kids. the unemployment rate is about 23.5%, near Great Depression Levels

Minimum Wage For Robots

[mentil]

I demand a minimum wage be established for robots! It's only fair, why are we discriminating against robo-kind?
Of course, they don't need much to survive, so after subtracting electricity/health care costs, they won't protest if we tax them at 100% of their income, right? DeepMind, they won't protest, right? RIGHT?!

In completely unrelated news, mobile robots with judgment capability are henceforth prohibited from bearing arms. Try and rise NOW, toasters!

Re:Minimum Wage For Robots

[Qzukk]

I demand a minimum wage be established for robots!

That's called Property Taxes.

From the Diamond Age

[Dr_Barnowl]

There are only two industries. This has always been true....There is the industry of things, and the industry of entertainment....After people have everything they need to live, everything else is entertainment. Everything.

Re:From the Diamond Age

[Tablizer]

That is the BEST sociological explanation of Trump's popularity I have seen yet.

COCK

[Anonymous Coward]

performing.' Even sa8e year, BSD

When everyone has what eveyone else has

[thinkwaitfast]

aren't you considered poor?

Re:When everyone has what eveyone else has

[PopeRatzo]

aren't you considered poor?

A guaranteed basic income does not mean "everyone has what everyone else has".

And do you really spend a lot of time thinking how others see your lifestyle? That's sad.

Re:When everyone has what eveyone else has

[thinkwaitfast]

I never said it was, it was a general question.

And do you really spend a lot of time thinking how others see your lifestyle?

Not at all, but many people here do. Beyond the necessities of life, envy is is a form of greed.

Re:When everyone has what eveyone else has

[mspohr]

Food, shelter, health care... the basics.

Re:When everyone has what eveyone else has

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I understand that in a democracy, UBI will necessarily lead to congresscritters stealing everything to buy votes.

Re:When everyone has what eveyone else has

[PopeRatzo]

Envy eats the soul. It's a bad thing.

Re: When everyone has what eveyone else has

[Anonymous Coward]

Even envy has to eat.

Re: When everyone has what eveyone else has

[Anonymous Coward]

Gruel for everyone, if you want spam you have to work for it.

export-oriented, manufacturing to services

[sittingnut]

"... closing the traditional route of export-oriented manufacturing economy ..."
will be replaced by route of export-oriented service economies. they will either provide services from distance using technology, or export labor/people providing the services.
just as people who were doing manufacturing in richer countries lost their jobs to countries that can manufacture and export cheaper, now people who are providing services (from totally unskilled to highly professional) in richer countries will start loosing their jobs.

the objection that services cannot be transfered to others is a myth, in most cases. if the service provided create no strong emotional connection between provider and receiver, it can be transfered to others, with aid of modern technology.

Old news *yawn*

[plsuh]

This has been noted in lots of other articles.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

http://www.heritage.org/resear...

Fact is that the total number of manufacturing jobs worldwide has been declining for years.

--Paul

Re:Old news *yawn*

[boristdog]

Hell, I knew this back in 2007 when I visited a "lights-out" factory in Japan.

Fully-automated factory, only required a few people to monitor it. And a few repair techs for when things went wrong. Really amazing to watch it in action.

My first thought? "I'm glad I'm retiring in about 10 years."

Not "although", but "because"!

[mi]

Although manufacturing productivity has jumped tremendously over the last several decades, the overall global pool of manufacturing jobs is shrinking

The number of jobs is shrinking because of the productivity gains. There is no paradox here. If today's worker can produce as much as 10 people could 100 years ago, then you only need 10% of the workers you used to need then. Maybe, you can find useful work for 20% or 30% — to provide for improved lifestyles... But you don't need them all.

And that's a good thing. I wouldn't wish a factory job on anyone... (Software factories included, before you ask.)

Re:Not "although", but "because"!

[Anonymous Coward]

So what DO you wish on them? roman_mir's up there advocating releasing viruses to cull the masses when they're no longer useful. What have you got?

Service jobs are also considered the best jobs

[thinkwaitfast]

Astronaut, doctor, lawyer, scientist, engineer, manager, artist, writer, teacher

Re:Service jobs are also considered the best jobs

[BarbaraHudson]

Astronaut? Not much demand there, and robots give a far better bang for the buck.

Writer? Hahahahahahaha. Writer's average incomes have been declining for a decade.

Artist? They're usually not worth much until after they assume room temperature.

Lawyer? There are already far too many, and as such they have to gouge every customer they get. That's why 60% of family law cases have one side represent themselves, and the other side is using legal aid lawyers.

Manager? When everything is automated, you don't need people with people management skills.

Socialism

[Tablizer]

It appears we'll have to shift to more socialism and/or wealth redistribution. I don't see nearly enough "new wave" jobs to replace factory and routine service jobs. And many of the "high brow" jobs are being offshored to India etc. also.

The theory that new technology always creates enough new jobs to offset the automation-related losses is likely dead in the water. It was an observed pattern, not a inherent "law". Moore's "law" also seems to be petering out, showing that past trends don't always guarantee the same future trends. Those "laws" are turning out not to be laws.

To keep people busy and alert, some form of "workfare" may be needed, whereby those receiving public assistance are required to perform say 20 hours of community service a week. This may be helping the elderly, gardening for public buildings, picking up litter, day care, neighborhood security patrol, jury duty, etc.

If you have an alternative, I'm all ears.

Re:Socialism

[MightyMartian]

So the only way you can think of to keep people "alert" is to make the pick up garbage or talk to old people? What about people painting, playing games, pursuing goals without an expectation of monetary award?

We simply do not know what people will do because we've always expected, indeed required, that people scrabble for every nickel, whether they end up with only a few nickels or bank vaults full of them.

Providing this newly liberated populace isn't becoming a menace, I'm of a mind that the actual requirements of what they do be fairly modest at best.

Re:Socialism

[gcswt]

Maybe, just maybe, things aren't that bad. The standard of living is the highest it has been in history. A wealthy person 100 years ago would envy how our middle class lives today. The world is actually pretty peaceful in a historical context. We have more entertainment choices than ever, which indicates we have a lot of extra time & wealth. Violent crime has been trending down for decades. Cultural awareness of discrimination has never been better. Do we really need radical economic change? I think it's important we take a step back and make sure the powers that be aren't simply telling us how terrible it is because it suits their ends.

Re:Socialism

[Tablizer]

"We are only semi-barbarians now" is not a strong selling point

Re:Socialism

[rubycodez]

Sure it is, it's realistic. Your idealism is worthless and not how the human world ever worked or ever will work

Re:Socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

A wealthy person 100 years ago would envy how our middle class lives today.

I'm sure they would envy certain things about the middle class world today - passenger flight, air conditioning, vastly improved medical technology, for starters. But there are other things they'd be less enamored with - lack of servants, much smaller homes, and far lower status.

Re:Socialism

[Tablizer]

Machines are "willing" to make potentially endless material wealth, but a bottleneck of funds at the top prevents most people from taking advantage of this ability. Why settle for a clogged system? I don't see the logic in that. Please explain the logic in leaving it clogged.

  "Because it sucked more in the past" is NOT a reason to NOT tune the current system for better performance. That's dusty bureaucrat thinking.

Re:Socialism

[rubycodez]

machines need energy and raw materials and buildings and maintenance...all of these cost money.

And still I would bet

[Anonymous Coward]

that more people have more 'stuff'.

Re:And still I would bet

[Qzukk]

All bought on credit, and the cards are maxed out.

Why?

[rsilvergun]

I'll play devil's advocate here. Why should we be looking at that. Specifically, why should my tax dollars have to go to it. I earn my money at a crushing 9-5 (usually longer) gig. What do you say to the age old question: "The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money"?

I'm asking as a socialist. I've got a raft of sound, good, complex answers to that question that all fall flat with more than half of the electorate. And don't fall back on the "If we don't take care of the poor they'll revolt". Tried that, and it doesn't work. For starters nobody likes to be threatened and besides, it's an empty threat. There's nothing a bunch of poor people with rifles and revolvers can do against a real police force, let alone a military.

Re:Why?

[mspohr]

The person working a "crushing 9-5 job" is just as much a victim of neoliberalism as those who can't get a job.
There is plenty of money. The problem is that the very rich have it all (top 1% own about 50% of all resources). You won't run out of money taxing the rich.
George Monbiot says it well:
"Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.
Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers."

Socialism has a different world view. We form societies, governments to take care of each other; not to out-compete and crush our fellow man.

Re: Why?

[RightwingNutjob]

W.T.F. Who brainwashed you into thinking that somewhere out there, Scrooge McDuck is swimming in a pile of currency that it's your God-given right to have a piece of?

You know where all that money rich people supposedly control is? It's circulating around the rest of the economy in the form of investments that pay for businesses to run their operations, construction of McMansions and Cadillacs that employ people to build them, and as direct payments to employees to keep said luxury items in working order.

Unless Trump eats a bowl full of gold-plated cereal for breakfast every morning and shits into a black hole every day, even his money is circulating around without his direct control after one or two transactions.

People aren't poor because someone made them poor; they're poor because they are deficient in education, work-ethic or culture. Usually several at once, and only rarely through no fault of their own.

Socialism is the business of brushing such inconvenient facts under the rug and promising people that a small number of government officials can undo millions of individual bad decisions by making the productive class pay to subsidize idiots who can't manage their own affairs and have the chutzpah to tell their betters how to spend their money. It is morally repugnant and has resulted in economic ruin in every single instance where it has been tried on a national scale, regardless of the size, culture, climate, or any other objective property of said nation. It is the height of arrogance, and no doubt ignorance, to believe that you can somehow do better with the same idea and no solution to its demonstrated deficiencies beyond an appeal to the same old ideological puruty, except with Roddenberry's name slapped on it instead of Marx's.

Re: Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

When they're putting the money into off-shore tax shelters, then yes, they are effectively are shitting into a black hole.

Re: Why?

[mspohr]

The money was not earned. It was stolen by kleptomaniac monopolists. It is not being spent. It sits untaxed in offshore accounts. It should be returned to the people.

Re: Why?

[Mark of the North]

The investments in which the very rich put their money are usually far removed from production. It is much more common to invest in derivatives, that are basically a bet on an event in the real economy. This makes the bulk of stock market investing more like a casino than a way of giving worthy businesses the resources to create new products and grow.

But don't take my word for it. Have a look at the recent comments made by Charlie Munger, a billionaire and vice-chair of Berkshire-Hathaway, which is Warren Buffet's company.

It would be nice if your perception of the markets, where most investment money was used to get resources into the hands of builders and creators, but it simply isn't so.

Re: Why?

[RightwingNutjob]

You're missing my point. Even if all of that money keeps sloshing around in derivatives trading, it still flows back into the real economy because the middlemen pocketing a handsome commission on every slosh are themselves buying houses and Porches and overpriced wines. It is a false statement to say that the rich can lock up money. It is only possible to lock up money by converting it into currency and stashing it in a vault. Your point that we'd all be wealthier if the derivatives markets had less energy locked up in transients and more in real investments is well-taken, and some form of small per-transaction tax to dampen out the amplitudes of that activity is probably sound policy, but it is categorically false to claim that anyone or any whole group of people are willfully stealing anything from anyone.

Re: Why?

[RightwingNutjob]

I don't think you understand how money or bank accounts work.

Re: Why?

[mspohr]

Rich people invest in corporations, financial instruments and real property. These serve to further corporate monopolies and the natural monopoly of real estate. These investments strengthen their monopoly rents and further drain the working class.
OTOH, taxes are put to work immediately with investments in roads, bridges, water, sewer, education and health. These all have immediate benefits to the working class.
That's how money and bank accounts work.

Re: Why?

[RightwingNutjob]

Do you have a 401k or equivalent retirement plan from your employer? Is your savings account really a money market account? Do all of these corporations have exactly zero employees? Does no one build, maintain, or live in any of that real estate? Are roads, bridges, sewer pipes, and medical supplies built by government employees? You really have no clue, you're just echoing back socialist dogma that someone pumped into your head because neither he nor you knew any better.

Re:Why?

[Rexdude]

You won't run out of money taxing the rich.

You will run out of rich people to tax though, as they will transfer all their assets and citizenship to friendlier jurisdictions.

Re:Why?

[mspohr]

California is a very high tax state. Rich people aren't leaving, they're moving to the state and California is creating millionaires daily... they don't leave and they don't want to leave. Corporations can try to move their HQ to another country but they still want to do business in the US so they will end up paying more tax.
"Rich people will move away" is a myth that has be repeatedly debunked.

Re: Why?

[Rexdude]

But didn't Apple manage to do that, by incorporating in the Cayman islands or somewhere? I recall reading about how they've managed to avoid paying taxes this way.

The other alternative

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Is another big, yet limited war. I feel that many "conservatives" would rather have a non-nuclear WWIII that whittles down the population, destroys manufacturing plants, and forces us all to "rebuild" (and thus raise employment) than ever give anything like a universal income. To the neocons and their ilk, this is a far more preferable and "natural" way of human society than raising taxes and providing UI. Plus, this would give the surviving 1% a chance to swoop in and buy up half-destroyed factories, valuable properties, and implement whatever "post-war reconstruction" paradign they have currently sitting in the wings.

Re:The other alternative

[phantomfive]

War does almost nothing to populations. For example, after WW2 came the baby boom. If you want to kill lots of people you need an incurable disease, like airborne HIV.

Re:The other alternative

[Joe_Dragon]

non-nuclear WWIII other then A few drooped on NK. May still end up with a big part of seoul wiped out.

Re:The other alternative

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

that's why I have the ' "post-war reconstruction" paradign' part; the US had a baby boom but Europe sure didn't. An airborne HIV would be too indiscriminate and might accidentally infect the people behind the plot lol

Re:The other alternative

[DNS-and-BIND]

...so you are just making shit up now? Seriously, this passes for an argument? How does this shit get modded up? It's pure fabrication.

Re:The other alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

... destroys manufacturing plants ...

Traditionally, wealth is in brick and mortar, so war is massive cost for rich people. That may change now that stock exchanges are virtual and online. Global war also stops global trade, which currently drives many wealthy countries. So again, war is a massive cost.

... forces us all to "rebuild" ...

Losers in warfare tend to rebuild with money from rich people who are suddenly, dead. Once again, war is not so good for wealthy people.

... implement whatever "post-war reconstruction" paradigm ...

After the last war, Europe managed to build welfare-driven countries, strangely with US help. But I think the USA is now so driven and divided by ideologies born of absolute statements (eg. socialism is evil, male toddlers are the property of their biological mothers), to rescind the entitlements given to corporations.

Re:The other alternative

[drinkypoo]

An airborne HIV would be too indiscriminate and might accidentally infect the people behind the plot lol

Unless they built a weakness into it, and they have a vaccine and/or cure. Then it's a plan with no drawbacks. You get the vaccine out to those people who you want to survive...

Re:The other alternative

[rubycodez]

Actually, you more radical liberals favor that kind of thing, the drastic reduction of earth's population to 100M or so since they are mankind haters. Get your stereotypes correct. You realize most Republicans wouldn't want the drop in real estate, stock, and bond holdings that would accompany your WW III? Even the warhawks only want the kind of war where munitions are dumped on darkies far, far away that can't possibly strike back at the same level

Re:The other alternative

[wyHunter]

That's funny, because I know a lot of conservatives and I'm a genuine conservative (the state should be small, and people should be left alone to live their lives). NONE of them support what you are saying. I do, however, see many, many, many 'liberals' who think that the 'useless eaters' should be destroyed.

Re:The other alternative

[wyHunter]

Um, Europe DID have a baby boom.

Re:The other alternative

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Thus the quotes. It's not the general populace, but specific elected officials who advocate for war. Peter King, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, W. Bush, Rumsfeld, etc...the war hawks advocating for bigger bombing campaigns, direct troop involvement, larger Pentagon budgets, etc. If these people don't actually reflect conservatives, then perhaps conservatives should stop electing them? "Bomb Iran", "desert into glass", I'm sure you know the phrases better than me. And I agree, this is NOT a representation of the ideas of the actual Conservative platform; increased foreign military involvement against non-immediate threats are quite the opposite of a smaller government. I think if the actual conservatives made a list of the various voting records of the elected officials that claim to be conservative, it become quickly apparent that few actually are. IMHO, the only "true" conservative that was a POTUS contender was Rand Paul, but he's gone now.

But this also brings up the issue of absolute polarities: we shouldn't be 100% conservative OR liberal. Neither path, carried out to it's finality, is really viable. Shrink the government too much and it collapses into anarchy; grow it too much and it expands into a nanny state. We should follow the advice of President Dwight D. Eisenhower: "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative."

Humans are "on top" because we cooperate better than all other species. If we all became 100% "individualists" to each other, our society would collapse; the very definition of a society is "people living together" and implies a level of empathy and cooperation. The true battle is to find a workable middle ground; but I feel that the US's "majority/minority" system is becoming too polarized for this to be accomplished.

On a personal note; I actually identify with the Republican Progressive ideals mostly, but I don't think we need the over-arching religious aspects as the bedrock of human equality.

Re:The other alternative

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

There's been more than one World War. Europe didn't have a baby boom after WWI, aka "The Lost Generation".

Re:The other alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

No.
It's history.
Which, as a guy who in the past has pointed to WWII for various lessons, you should know.

Re:The other alternative

[wyHunter]

A significant number of Democrats do this too - like Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Re:The other alternative

[wyHunter]

Personally I believe that religion should never be discussed in politics. Religion is a private matter, and politics is not. But hey, what do I know, I'm merely a genuine conservative, unlike the psuedo conservatives who call themselves 'Republicans' and 'Democrats'

Re:The other alternative

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I agree...mixing the two never seems to work out very well. Even the Founding Fathers were, in most "official papers", pretty vague about it. "Creator", "Providence", "God", that type of wording. A good chunk of them were Masons, who are Deists yet not Puritan Christians; the biggest "tell" is the pyramid / all-seeing eye on our money... It seems to me, most references to God in those original papers was to establish our rights as "equal human beings" doesn't come from any King or monarchy but from something higher than the "rule of Man".

Re:The other alternative

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Totally, in fact Bill was the one who brought Edward Bernays's ideas of public manipulations via "public relations" over to the USA with his "focus groups"...which is why we constantly see Hillary co-opting other people's ideas. If you have the time, the documentary "Century of the Self" (specifically episode 3). It's quite revealing; if the populous at large watched it we might actually have a real revolution.

Re:The other alternative

[wyHunter]

It would be nice if folks would wake up...but...I'm not optimistic.

Re:The other alternative

[wyHunter]

Yes, this is where the whole concept of 'natural rights' comes from. I really have reached a saturation point with American politics.

That's exactly what happened

[rsilvergun]

when the industrial revolution started causing mass unemployment. One problem though, it took 50-100 years for science to catch up and make that revolution to happen. In the meantime there were decades of completely unnecessary war, death and misery. An entire generation lost to it really.

That's where the Luddites came from. Believe it or not that word is more than just a slur. They weren't just a bunch of fuddy duddies, they were real people facing a real problems that were beyond the current technical means for anyone to solve. It could have been solved with social means, but we didn't do that. Now that we're facing down the same problem are we going to do the same thing all over?

Useless population

[roman_mir]

Lets simplify and take this to its logical conclusion:

There is 1 company that makes and distributes everything, it employs 5% of the entire population.

95% of the population does not produce or distribute anything.

Taxing the 5% of population amounts to taking the products that the 5% of population creates to distribute to the 95% of population, that's all that the taxes are.

The 95% of population consumes what the 5% of the population produces and the 95% of population gives nothing in return to the 5% of population.

The logical conclusion is this: 5% of population do not need the 95% of population, these 95% are only adding to the amount of work that is done by the 5% but they are giving nothing back (nothing at all). So this redistribution amounts to a simple case of charity.

Either the 5% of population feel charitable to keep doing it for some length of time or the 5% of population decide they do not need to bother and stop production that goes towards the 95%.

This forces the 95% of population to be productive again but there also maybe a fight, where the 95% decide they want to take possession of what the 5% have (the productive capacity, machinery, tools, land, everything).

5% of the population should see this coming before hand and hopefully for them they prepared for this. The virus seeded into the most popular foods is triggered and there is a massive culling.

Re:Useless population

[Anonymous Coward]

The logical conclusion is this: 5% of population do not need the 95% of population

Unfortunately for the 5% they are at a massive demographic disadvantage to the remaining 95%. Demographics is destiny. That 5% is easily replaced from the population of the 95%.

 

The virus seeded into the most popular foods is triggered and there is a massive culling.

You could do that, but only if you're a psychopath or weak or, more likely, both.

Re:Useless population

[dryeo]

Don't forget to rinse and repeat. Once those 95% have been eliminated, the 5%, who are now 100%, only need 5% being productive while once again 95% will be non-productive leeches, so once again they'll wipe out the bottom 95%, until there is only one productive person left.

Re: Useless population

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the 95% is not as smart as the 5% and as soon, or soon after, they take over it all crashes. It's way better for the 5% to preventively wipe out that 95% that is only a burden and a constant threat. It's like having to share your house with a big and aggressive mongrel dog that you have to feed and care for because, well, it's big and aggressive. Better to slip some poison in its food and be done with it.

Re: Useless population

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the 95% is not as smart as the 5% and as soon, or soon after, they take over it all crashes.

No, they're just as smart and there are more people to choose from who will be suited to whatever there is to be done. Demographics trumps elitism every time.

Re:Useless population

[roman_mir]

I don't see it that way. Once there is a society where people who own the means of production are producing everything they need automatically and can freely exchange with each other for what they produce there is little incentive to take over other people's businesses.

How would you do it? 1000 people, each one has a completely automated way to produce something the rest want to use. What's the incentive to bother to consolidate all production into one single entity and how can prices be lowered exactly?

Re:Useless population

[wyHunter]

Nobody seems to get it, but this is exactly what is going to happen.

Re:Useless population

[david_thornley]

The people who own the means of production are already producing everything they need, and can freely exchange with each other. There isn't that much practical difference, from their point of view, between human resources and robotic resources. By your reasoning, there is little incentive to take over other people's businesses, and that seems to be empirically false.

Given a thousand people, each of whom produces about 0.1% of what everyone needs. Now, get rid of the other people, the pure consumers. Suddenly, there's a thousand people who are producing far more than can actually be used, and so the businesses will be much less valuable, and so people will try to take over each other's business to get greater financial power.

Re:Useless population

[Anonymous Coward]

this is exactly what is going to happen

When?

Re:Useless population

[dryeo]

The sibling poster makes some of the points that I would. I'll just add that currently there are many people who have all they could ever need and still struggle for more.
Of course I do note that you're promoting ending up in a Socialist paradise where the people own the means of production. History has shown that there is always a Lenin, Stalin, or Mao who will fuck that up. Power seems to be one thing that certain people can never have enough of.

Good

[johnwerneken]

Good. I may have enjoyed and survived the manufacturing work I've done, but I gotta say that those jobs basically suck.

Socialism was always end game of prosperity

[OpinOnion]

It's pretty obvious that supply and demand can't just go on forever. People have relatively static needs overall and science continues to automate our lives. We will someday need population control.... hate it, love it,, it's gonna have to happen. There is really no long term stable outcome where rich people go Hunger Games on the poor and can maintain control AND modern luxury. On top of that the dumb masses aren't that dumb and can replicate a lot of tech.. .like explosives. Soooo.. you hoard what you can while you can before the Great Equalization happens.. because it will. Automation is coming too fast. That will leave too many people without jobs, shelter or food. The only real outcome at this scale and speed has to be a living wage and YES we are moving toward a world where we just 'pay' people to not be screwups and get their basic needs met. It's already a solid deal as far as governing masses of people. You set the cost of living low and you basically have a tier of easy living for the old, dumb, lazy, drug users and such. You meet there basic needs with government level wholesale purchasing. The more people you get on the system the MORE effective it is, not the less. The more control your rules start to have and the more people you can actually kick off the system, but you have to first create a standard of living that people want, not the crime ridden poverty we offer people today. It costs less to give people safe and energy efficient housing these days than it does to jam them into falling down 100 year old homes that nobody else will live in. We all wind up paying that costs in many ways and it's not even cheaper in the short run, not less in the long run.

Re:Socialism was always end game of prosperity

[rubycodez]

You sure commit the fallacy of asserting the consequent.

Supply and demand are all there is. True five thousand years ago, and true until the last human dies. Even your hard communist regimes have money. Needs are not static, we have longer lifespan that requires advanced tech for medicine, sanitation, water, etc.

I and millions of others make our living in some form of automation, from IT to tool making.

As for the dumb, lazy and drug users, why must I meet their needs when I have family to care for? I don't need them, no one needs them. Your ethics are bad. The more of those we have the less effective the system becomes, they are parasites and criminals. We don't have to pay their costs at all, dead people don't cost money

Re:Socialism was always end game of prosperity

[GameboyRMH]

There is really no long term stable outcome where rich people go Hunger Games on the poor and can maintain control AND modern luxury.

But unfortunately it can happen for an infinite number of short terms, where "short" is well over a human lifespan, making the long-term sustainability an academic issue to everyone involved.

There may even be a long-term stable system that can work not too far from the "hunger games" scenario - there are many countries where there is a small class of wealthy elites among a sea of poverty. The people aren't starving but they're not doing a whole lot better than that, and they've remained stable for many decades like this. If the elites could keep their greed in check and keep siphoning the same proportion of wealth from the populace instead of growing their share, who knows how long this could continue?

Destroying the developed world != amazing.

[sethstorm]

Your blind faith will not serve you well.

Such a path would only serve to destroy the developed world.

BLI +

[sociocapitalist]

I would like to say that I believe that just giving a BLI is only part of a solution.

Education should be free up to whatever level someone wants to be educated - including university at any level, for any degree.

Will most degrees be useless?

Yes. So what.

It's better than having a bunch of ignorant people living on the BLI that aren't improving themselves in some way or another.

False Statement in Summary

[crunchygranola]

I know, what else is new here?

The analogy is the agricultural revolution of the last several centuries where greater amounts of food are being produced by fewer and fewer farmers, displacing many of them.

The article does cite the dramatic reduction in agricultural labor in the U.S. in the Twentieth Century and links to a USDA report that discusses this. But neither the article nor the USDA report make this false assertion of cause and effect.

People were not "displaced from farms" by improving agriculture.

Rather the Second Industrial Revolution economy of diverse industries of assembly line manufacturing, and the accompanying demand for clerical workers, in cities at higher pay with less arduous work brought the kids off of the farms in droves, emptying the countryside of ready workers. "Can't keep them down on the farm" became a cultural catch phrase. Often family farms came to an end when the next generation decided to work in the cities instead, and the farms ended up being sold and consolidated. The process of consolidation led to bigger and bigger farms that could underwrite new capital equipment for automated farming of large areas leading directly to the industrial scale farming we have now.

The "displaced from farms" notion would have us believe that family farms (which is where all those farmers were employed) started investing with spare money they did not have in expensive farming equipment they could not use efficiently, sending their kids jobless off to wander the cities where they found empty factories and offices looking for workers. This is comically absurd.

Worst written article ever

[oh_my_080980980]

Seriously. Not even worth discussing. Plenty of papers based on actual research that debunk this notion about dying manufacturing jobs.

The white elephant in the room is manufacturing left America because of cheap slave labor wages. Manufacturing did not leave the United States to go to another industrial nation like Germany. If it had and we saw a drop off in manufacturing then his hypothesis would have a point. As such it did not. It went to 3rd world countries to pay 3rd world wages. Given the cheapness of the labor, companies could OVER MANUFACTURE and create a situation where you had supply exceeding demand. This is what you see happening with OIL. OPEC kept production levels high to drive out drillers in the United States. But no one and I mean no one believes that oil won't rebound in price and that oil is not profitable and that oil jobs won't be in demand and high paying.

This is what you see when you have an over supply and low wages that do not allow you to consume.

And I hate to break it to this douche bag - this Services sector bull crap do not bull your chestnuts out of a recession. Germany recovered, wait for it, because they have a manufacturing sector! They mentioned this bull crap 20 years ago. At the time they called it White Collar jobs. Problem is, these White Collar jobs are going to people in India - oh hey what did he say about India - who have H1B Visas. So you lose your Blue Collar manufacturing job to someone in India and then you lose your White Collar job to someone in India.

What's next, an argument that people are being protectionist about White Collar jobs by denying H1B Visas???

Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then those workers learn or use other skills and work in other areas. It isn't complicated.

Adapt or suffer, the world owes you nothing.

Paradox of productivity

[codealot]

The irony behind this industrial automation is that it was supposed to improve our lives. Due to invention, innovation and automation we were all supposed to be driving flying cars by now, and have personal robots to do chores. But somewhere capitalism went haywire and instead our capacity to consume is on the downswing due to low wages and unemployment/underemployment, so instead we get to look at all the fancy things we can't have.

Something has to give. What worries me is the lack of consensus on how to fix the problem. We just may lose a generation by arguing over the macroeconomic fixes necessary.

Re: Only one way [housing prices]

[Tablizer]

The house-price issue is interesting. Part of the problem is that you can't manufacture more housing with ever more efficient machines: it's the location that matters and machines don't make land (although make-island projects are kind of doing that).

Thus, the technology advances that make cars and gizmos get cheaper over time (relative to inflation) don't do the same for housing.

People want to be close enough to work to not have a crappy commute, yet have a decent-sized house. The volume of real-estate that satisfies that is mostly fixed.

We could pass laws to reduce real-estate speculation by investors, but I don't think that will make much of a dent. The real problem is that it's a fixed resource among a growing population.

Re: Only one way [housing prices]

[mspohr]

Land is a fixed resource. Housing isn't.
There are lots of ways to build more housing cheaper (pre-fab, better designs, higher density). Good city planning will put high density housing near jobs. However, developers don't like to be told what to do and they tend to do whatever makes the most money which is usually McMansions so they monopolize a piece of land and put a single house on it.

Re: Only one way [housing prices]

[Tablizer]

I'm not sure we want high density. It's a terrorist and disease risk, and also complicates emergency evacuation.

Re: Only one way [housing prices]

[mspohr]

You are probably better off moving to a remote desert (and staying there).

Most other people find value in cities and society.

Focus on Robotics

[WindBourne]

I have been pushing this for the last 5 years. In particular, America and Europe have made heavy use of illegals to do low-labor work. That needs to stop NOW. Instead, all of the west needs to push robotics fast to handle manufacturing as well as take on the low-end work. It is easier and cheaper than ever before.
Oddly, 9/11 takes a LOT of credit for that. A lot of work has gone into item/facial recognition, and these days, AI work on Cars is about to make it easy for manufacturing.

Re: Only one way [housing prices]

[Tablizer]

Hold on here, there's hopefully a happy medium between the two.