Your assumption that returning to the tax rates of the previous century will break something (when dropping those taxes did nothing at all) is the one that requires further proof.
1980 is associated with the Reagan recovery, and 1996 is roughly when the Internet boom occurred.
But that said, America's voted for high spending, let them have the high taxes and the crappy economy that goes with it.
It's not a good idea, but it's what the people want.
And yes, the republicans have filibustered most attempts at defining our spending over the last 4 years, but there's an act of congress that addresses spending and has budget in the name:
A law with "budget" in the name is not necessarily a budget.
I personally don't care for Obama much, but partisan hacks like yourself are exactly the reason this country is in trouble in the first place. You spend your time worshiping Bush rather than addressing real issues, which forces me to defend Obama rather than deal with his very real flaws. Attack him for something bad (drone strikes, wiretapping...) and we've can try to make progress. But continue to attack him for the mess Bush left and you're just wasting everyone's time.
Worshipping Bush? Where? Partisan hack, speak for yourself.
There's a double standard deployed here, where Bush left a mess for Obama, but Clinton apparently left no mess for Bush (9/11 is completely Bush's fault, huh?). Blaming Bush for the state of everything when we've reached Obama's 2nd term is hilarious when no such standard was applied for Bush.
Asking for objective standards to be applied to both parties is not worship or partisan.
Pointing out the fiscal irresponsibility of the party in power is not partisan. They're in power, they're supposed to be using it in the public interest, which does not include racking up deficits and debt.
So the key point I'm taking away here is that we shouldn't blame Democrats for failed policies. It's the Republican's fault for not blocking them, or failing to repeal them afterwards.
If circumstances, such as labour-saving technology, change faster than the system can adapt, no new system is required for there to be problems. It's not a hidden assumption I've snuck into the discussion, it's what I've been saying the entire time since I wrote: "we are in danger of transitioning to post-scarcity technology without transitioning to a post-scarcity economy" in my first post in this thread.
Technology change is driven by human ingenuity. The system's ability to adapt is driven by human ingenuity. Claiming that humans can drive technological change faster than humans can adapt to it is questionable - if humans start failing to adapt, the economic and political systems become unstable, which slows down technological change.
There are negative feedback loops that make this system stabler than you imagined.
They weren't particularly relevant because we're talking about a potential future, not the past, and those examples don't include changes as extreme as our hypothetical example. They are relevant to the overall discussion of structural unemployment though.
An extreme change that you had to assume. I'll admit that if you want to imagine a fantasy world, reality does not apply. But if you want to treat the fantasy world as a possible future of our reality, you must deal with reality's factors.
it seemed a lot like you were trying to present your analogy, then act as if I were arguing against that analogy rather than what we're actually arguing about. The analogies were completely superfluous. Stating that I didn't understand the examples in your analogies was just insulting. I understand them fine, I don't understand what contorted logic actually makes them analogous to the discussion at hand. Maybe if you could explain that in some satisfactory manner, I wouldn't think that they were just straw men.
We both know you're not arguing there is such a thing as a light speed car, we're discussing a robotic dystopia. Treating your robotic dystopia as a "light speed car" is a metaphor, which is analogy.
Calling my metaphor a strawman argument is wrong categorization, because no one is going to confuse a light speed car for a robotic dystopia. Strawmans are misdirection, arguing against what you did not say, and confusing you or the audience as to what your argument is. A clear analogy is misdirection only if you have no clue what you're arguing about. If the analogy is inapplicable, it's a false analogy, not a strawman. Using the wrong label is a wrong understanding.
Trouble is, I think your entire analogy is irrelevant. If you could clarify what parts of our argument is the "falling object", what "falling" means in this context, and what the "escape velocity" means in the argument. Just so you know, "aka" is short for "also know as". Escape velocity is not "also known as" "going up", but that's a really minor nitpick compared to the silly analogy.
Use of AKA was wrong. My bad. I should have used IOW or e.g.
"Falling" is a "negative" force. "Going up" is a "positive" force. There is an object we're applying these forces to. "Escape velocity" is an endstate for the object, which requires the application of a lot of net "positive" force. Throw a baseball upwards by arm, it will not achieve escape velocity, there is insufficient "positive" force to overcome the "negative" force of gravity. But use a space rocket to push the baseball, and it can achieve escape velocity.
Similarly, you point to robotic automation as a "positive" force that takes us to the dystopian endstate. Our human society is the "object". I've been describing various "negative" forces that work against robotic automation bringing us to a dystopian endstate. To prove that the dystopia is likely,, you must show that there is enough "positive" force to overcome any "negative" forces involved.
Sure, the Republicans took control of Congress soon after, but they didn't make any drastic changes through the remainder of Clinton's terms.
Welfare reform? Blocked Hillarycare?
Whereas for Bush II, he is credited with his tax cuts, and the war in Iraq. Both which started under a Republican majority.
Followed by a Democrat controlled congress who got elected due to Republican fiscal irresponsibility, but increased deficit spending after coming into power. After which, a Democrat-driven fiscal policy exploded and triggered a recession. (idea was to subsidize mortgages to people who weren't good credit risks; this encouraged all sorts of risky and stupid loaning)
Followed by trillion dollar gov't deficits when Democrats controlled the legislature and the presidency. (And Senator Obama voted for that level of spending, so he's not off the hook).
At this point in time, we've gone 4 years without a budget (entire Obama 1st term), with Democrats blocking any attempts to define one.
Our Great Recession (or Depression 2.0) can be easily laid at the feet of Democratic politicians, but Blame Bush (TM).
1. I said debt, but I did not say national debt, and I also referred to it as spending in the same sentence. All spending is debt, until you offset it with revenue. If you fail to offset it, it will become deficit spending which contributes to the national debt, but that's really off-topic since we're talking about spending without regard to government revenue, only in comparison to household income.
I now see what you mean, but the words mean different things. "Debt" is not interchangeable with "spending". Debt is an obligation; there is no obligation to spend money, though there is an obligation to pay back loans. Spending money that you have does not create debt; you just reduce your savings/reserves. Borrowing money is what creates debt.
2. I addressed the financial solvency of the federal government:
If we assume tax rates and revenue are a static problem, and that it won't have any effect to double taxes on certain types of income. (ex: Capital gains)
What're you going to do if that doesn't work as expected?
3. Your claim that the government is insolvent is belied by reality, where our government can still sell bonds at a lower interest rate than anyone else in existence. Why do they have a better credit rating than you can ever hope to achieve, if they understand math so much worse than you?
They don't have a credit rating better than me. I've repaid all my debts. The US, has not. The US credit rating is eroding as creditors realize the US gov't is not serious about paying back the debt.
Yes, they can get away with it because they own printing presses and can "create" money out of thin air. What actually happens is that they're using inflation as a wealth tax (that hurts the middle class the most) to bankroll the deficit spending. If you earn $100k/year, but it doesn't have the buying power of $50k/year 10 years ago, that is not prosperity.
Appealing to an entity that hasn't planned a budget in 4 years as a "math smart" is also pretty hilarious. Go back and stick your head in the sand. Obama's prosperity is juuuuust around the corner. Ignore the unemployment rates or the lack of growth - that's all Bush's fault, and Obama just needs 4 more years...
PS: Funny how Bush II's economy wasn't Clinton's fault, or that Clinton's economy can't be credited to Bush I.
Yes, and as I said, it's an invalid comparison because they switched types of averages halfway through.
No, you said it was a comparison between income and debt. Spending is not deficit or debt. Incorrect.
Indeed, and what valid point about fairness or desirability do you draw from the fact that median income (the middle class, if you will) is so very, very far below mean income?
Whatever valid point you wish to draw from that, it does not excuse the financial insolvency of the federal gov't - which harms everyone, but especially the poor who are made dependent on welfare payments.
The problem I see with your pragmatic approach is that the natural tendency of gov't is towards control, power, and tyranny.
It is necessary to push back hard on these things, or they simply try again when they feel they can get away with it. (They still try in either case, but a tougher stance buys more time, as they know they won't get away with it)
Liberty, or death, as some ancient white guys liked to put it. "Peace for our time" often turns out to be no peace at all.
First, you're comparing median income, to mean debt. The mean debt per person is 20257.23, while the mean income is 48520.90, So government spending is roughly 40% of our money, not 105% of our money.
You need to re-read the post you responded to.
Total government spending in the United States has grown to $6.2 trillion (2012), and with ~115 million households thats ~$54000 per household.
The median income for those 115 million households was $53000.
It's a comparison between gov't spending and household income, not gov't debt and income.
There is a comparison between mean and median, but that can still be used to make a valid point about the fairness or desirability of our current state of affairs.
send the bible belt soldiers to police the godless liberal traitors in california
send the black soldiers to police the cracka racists in the south
send the northeastern soldiers to police the whackjob traitors in the midwest
send the deep southern soldiers to police the coward yankee bastards up north.
That assumes you've got neatly segregated military units with homogenous biases.
It also requires very careful information control to each of those units. "Wait, the US army just killed friends and family back home" is going to get people thinking.
It's still possible to divide and conquer as you say, but it's harder to pull off than in a low information flow society.
The proper solution is that both people and government need to try work with each other as partners toward a common goal, both 'sides' need to calm down and negotiate with mutual interest in the concerns (and rights) of the 'other side'.
The government is the servant of the people. The proper solution is for the gov't to back down.
Anything else is giving the gov't more power than it was delegated, which tracks the parable of the camel and the tent.
I don't believe that robotics makes this system inevitable.
Does robotics even make this political system more likely? Because that's yet another hidden assumption you've snuck into this discussion. (assuming the rise of a political system that imposes artificial scarcity)
Also, the examples of the past and present you're providing aren't really all that relevant.
I pointed out that robotic automation is 80 years old, and it's "not relevant"? If robotic automation is not relevant to robotics, what is?
Would you like to slap a timeframe on your predicted future, by the way? 100 years? 200 years?
Ok. I'm looking at a falling object... Another strawman analogy (one that seems to work on the premise that achieving escape velocity is the same thing as going up). Claiming that I don't understand the analogy of the light speed car is yet another fallacious statement. You're playing at lecturing down to me as if I were a child. It's transparent and poor rhetoric. We each seem to believe that the other doesn't understand the forces involved in our scenario of rapidly advancing technology. Of course, you're the one whose claim requires forces that will somehow act to protect the masses from negative consequences from large-scale social and economic upheaval. From my point of view, you've failed to identify those forces. As far as I can tell, those forces consist only of your own confidence that things will turn out the way you hope.
Wow. Where to even begin?
1. A strawman fallacy is one where I make up an argument and claim that it is your argument. When it happens, it means I misrepresented what you claimed. I made an analogy, whether good or bad, it's not a strawman. Categorical error.
2. "Going up" was meant to clarify that the escape velocity vector was in the opposite direction of "falling down". Are you trying to say that the analogy doesn't make any sense, or are you trying to say that it isn't applicable to your argument? I'm going to assume the latter, but you criticized an irrelevant aspect of my analogy, which does not demonstrate understanding.
3. If you are good at accounting for different forces, you have not demonstrated it in our discussion. For example, you said increased complexity increasing failure rates was fallacious. It is not - unless you want to claim that simple systems are more likely to fail than complex systems.
Your example of ball bearings compared different technologies; the new technology provided the reliability increase, not the complexity of the system. Complexity in of itself is not a desirable thing, it means more pre-requisites, costs, and more points of failure- but it is often necessary for improved capabilities and performance. You conflated the benefit of a new technology (+ force) with the downside of complexity (- force), crediting complexity for the overall net gain. Wrong.
Technology can reduce the downsides of complexity, but complex systems are just overall more fragile. A robotic eco-system is going to be an incredibly complex system; and assuming it can and will be perfected is a large leap of faith.
Next, let's look at how well you understand my points:
You've said over and over again that you don't think my scenario can happen, and you seem to have two separate arguments. One is that robots doing human jobs is impossible in the first place.
Nope. I claimed that robots are only capable of doing a subset of human jobs. Robots are doing some human jobs now, where it is economical. I thought you understood me when you brought up how robots are built to fill niches, but apparently you didn't. Robots can displace humans for some jobs, but they cannot replace until they can match the versatility of the human package. (this includes cognitive ability)
ATMs displaced tellers, they didn't replace. In the
"never" is not something you've actually measured.
So you disagree with my opinion, but refuse to give your own. Just another asshole nay-sayer. People like you are the reason the US is a failure.
"I disagree" is not enough of an opinion for you?
Fine. Income taxes reduce employee income. "employer-paid" taxes increase the cost of employees and result in companies hiring less people. An unemployed person has no income at all, and it's an effect of that "employer-paid" tax - which still hurts employees despite the label.
If the Fair Tax did away with the SS tax (while remaining revenue neutral, big IF), then that's a good thing - if employees are cheaper to hire, there will be more profitable jobs to hire them for. More jobs is higher demand, which will result in the price (wages) for employees going up, given the same supply of workers.
If adding the tax can hurt employees, dropping the tax can most definitely un-hurt (or benefit) employees.
/shrug on your experience with the Fair Tax. It's an idea with potential, not that there's any shortage of ideas with potential. Whether it is a tax increase or not depends entirely on the numbers, and those numbers aren't meaningful unless it becomes law.
No, they don't. I've worked at a place where health benefit costs increased, and pay didn't decrease.
Congrats. You got a payraise.
I've worked at a place where they cut health benefits, and they too did not increase pay.
That's a paycut. You're doing the same work for less compensation. It's just (generally) easier to stomach a loss of benefits than a loss of monetary income.
In practice, companies *do not* adjust pay when a tax changes. They "might" but then they "might" all agree to cut CEO pay by 99% and increase the pay for all based on the savings. That's just as likely as all the tax savings ending up in your paycheck.
Right, because changing that pay instantly could trigger some personnel losses that would be hard to compensate for. Better to eat the cost in the short term and make gradual adjustments. (or, pocket the profits and make gradual adjustments)
But the cost of employing you (or me) does change with the new laws, and in the long run, an employee will never be paid more than what he earns the company. If laws make it unprofitable to hire employees, we *will* see more unemployment as businesses will cut away all of those unprofitable jobs.
To state my position again, I'm worried that we will reach a point where we have post-scarcity capable technology, but artificially imposed scarcity combined with a structurally-imposed inability for people to work around the system of technology leading to virtual slavery, or mass poverty.
Then we are not discussing a problem with robotics technology, but the rise of a nasty political system. Do you believe that robotics make this political system inevitable?
As for the slave 2000 years ago imagining owning an iPhone, no they couldn't. Neither could a King in that time (although both the King and probably especially the slave almost certainly could and did imagine having some way of communicating with people instantaneously at long distances). So, yes, modern communications technologies have become widespread and relatively affordable. I don't think that proves any part of your argument.
The observation is that automation and technology have increased standards of living and allowed even advanced technology to be distributed to the common man.
This is the opposite direction to get to your anticipated dystopia. You're looking at a falling object and concluding that it will achieve escape velocity (aka going up)... somehow. You dismissed the light-speed car, but you didn't understand the analogy - if you don't account for all the forces involved correctly, you can end up with absurd (and wrong) conclusions.
Says the one arguing from the position that the invisible hand of the market will prevent human suffering.
Quote me where I said that, or where that was implied by my arguments. Strawman.
It's also funny being lectured on human suffering when your beloved solution of socialism is the biggest murderer of human beings in the previous century. National and international variants treated humans as meat and industrialized murder.
Moore's law is gonna bite you in the backside hard.
Moore's "law" is not a law of physics, but a neat observation of how transistor sizes has decreased exponentially for the time period we've been observing it. It's not guaranteed to go on forever, though we've given it a good run. (note they had to downward adjust the doubling period)
The law of diminishing returns, on the other hand, is a physical law of sorts, and it is kicking in. It's getting harder to increase processor frequency without using fancy cooling technology. There are still gains from smaller transistors, but they're smaller than they used to be - hence the move towards multi-core CPUs.
The entire history of silicon, screen and keyboard computing (to me) isn't any older than that. If it took only 40 years for computers to take over the world and I can reasonably guess that the number of computers since then increase exponentially, is it really wrong to assume that over the next 40 years we won't create a machine with AI?
An army of retards aren't going to out-think a PhD. A computer isn't even a retard. You can't just stack a billion calculators together and call that intelligence.
Self-awareness doesn't seem to be a function of processing power, so the ability to throw more transistors at the problem isn't a guarantee of success.
I know this isn't a disproof, it's just a justified skepticism of those who think AI is just around the corner.
These back and forths are getting entirely too long, so I'm focusing on just 2 points. This does not mean I agree with you on the other points, just that it is too time consuming to do a point-by-point rebuttal.
Point 1: Jobs Not Zero Sum.
I am so tired of that phrase. What meaning is it even supposed to have in the context of the job market? Not being a zero sum game is not remotely the same thing as boundless.
Sure. Along with want, let's not forget that jobs scale with magic fairy dust and unicorn kisses. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there's a scale from necessities out to wild, fantastic, impractical desires. The buying power is always going to belong to the necessities, needs and basic luxuries....
Jobs not being zero sum means that your core problem of "robotics replace jobs, reducing overall number of jobs, leaving a lot of people with no possible job" is a faulty prediction.
For robots to reduce the overall number of jobs, a robot taking a job must permanently make another human unemployed at some ratio (1:1, 100:1, take your pick). This is zero-sum thinking - because you're thinking that there's a finite number of jobs that can ever be filled.
As my earlier posts have demonstrated, jobs are not zero-sum. For your doomsday to take place, the overall number of jobs must decrease, but jobs not being zero-sum means that robots displacing humans in jobs is insufficient to create the result you're thinking of.
Consider this helpful thought experiment - Every robot needs maintenance; as the number of robots filling menial human tasks increases, the amount of robot maintenance needed also increases. You can make robots to maintain the robots, but those robots need maintenance as well - and you've increased the complexity of the system. In engineering, complexity increases failure rate exponentially. (System uptime is dependent on all links not failing) Failure needs fixing, or you have a pile of non-working robots. All of this maintenance is "want", and translates into human jobs. Human jobs scales with the number of robots.
We also have real life experience that automation does not destroy jobs - the simple proof is that with the increased amount of automation over the past 50 years, unemployment (in the US) has still stayed around the single digits despite population growth. There are more jobs despite increased productivity. The average worker is far more productive than his counterpart 100 years ago, and this has made him [i]richer, not poorer[/i]. (There are political factors that can make him poorer, but you can't blame those on technology).
Point 2: The "perfectly" automated world is post-scarcity AND has "nigh-infinite" resources.
What contradiction? Are you talking about that infinite resources nonsense? That was your strawman, not my argument. I think that the "assumptions" I'm making about the possible and probable future of technological progress are pretty good. My pessimistic assumptions about human nature in such a situation are based on pretty sound historical and current evidence. I would say that you, for example, are a pretty good example that, if my scenario does come to pass, there will be people denying it's happening as it happens, sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting "la la la, I can't hear you". If it does happen, I wonder, what evidence would you accept as proof that it really is happening?
How does the robot displace the human worker? By being cheaper. If robots are to displace the majority of human workers, they must be more productive than even the cheapest worker.
This means robots must be terribly productive; to the point that they can produce goods terribly cheap. Terribly cheap goods represents huge increases of standard of living - give a beggar $1, and that would be enough in robot-workers world to buy enough goods to live like a king. That's how prod
All jobs are not about pay. Are you a good parent because you get paid more? Do you take care of your elderly relatives to get paid?
Kids don't pay their parents to be parented. But kids are expected to give their parents some sort of respect/support due to that debt, and that is right.
An abusive parent can rightly be expected to get less respect/support from his kids due to bad parenting. There's no law to enforce this, but we recognize the moral obligations involved here.
Family also plays by very different rules than other relationships. Teachers are not family.
Teaching is about community and results. It requires a certain amount of money, but too much will damage the system.
So there are times when you need to cut education funding or it'll cause damage. I'll take that. My state's education system is damaged and needs a cut in funding before it gets any worse.
The one we've been discussing, where robots are doing all the real labour and humans, for the most part, can only find employment doing demeaning and uncompetitive make-work or can't find employment at all.
Your projected problem, not to be confused with a current or likely problem.
But it doesn't contradict my point, which is that usage of those things is greatly reduced. I haven't argued that employment for humans will vanish, just that the majority won't be able to find jobs and that...
Look at the graph halfway down the page, we're building more bikes and cars, which reflects more usage, not less. Your assumptions about what is currently happening contradict reality. This should be a hint to you that your perception is faulty. If your perception of the *present* is faulty, your predictions about the future may also need some re-examination.
... Frankly, I can't think of much about government that I wouldn't classify as a form of socialism, it's all just a matter of degree to me.
You define all government activities as socialism. I define socialism as gov't control of the economy, to be contrasted to a free markets. (Where the gov't sets the rules, but does not try to control the outcomes) My definition leaves some gov't activity outside the scope of socialism (such as diplomacy, policing, and legislation).
No, there's no perfect free market, but it is the free-est markets that have created the most wealth for humanity.
If socialism makes you uncomfortable,...
It doesn't merely make me uncomfortable, I despise it. National socialism introduced the world to industrialized mass murder. It's all rooted in how the socialist perceives the link between a gov't and the people. An "elite" who sees of the mass of humanity as useless "meat" is one that has no qualms about sending them to the glue factory. "for the greater good"
People are not horses. A horse is property; but humans aren't. Humans create jobs; horses do not. (Human ownership of horses creates jobs, but it is the human creating the job, not the horse).
This comes back to assumptions - you assume some limited supply of jobs. Again, jobs are not zero sum. Jobs come from human want, and human want is a limitless pit. Compare the richest guy you can find with the poorest guy you can find. The difference in their possessions is "want". Multiply that by however many billion people to get a rough guess of how much work needs to be done before that human want starts to be filled and there might not be new jobs. (And the rich guy still wants more! Want is unlimited, and jobs scale with want)
The society you imagine where all humanity's wants are satisfied without a corresponding amount of human jobs is a post-scarcity society - by definition, this is a a society with nigh INFINITE resources. In that world, all of our economic theories no longer apply, because our economic knowledge is all based on the distribution of scarce goods.
Since that society has so many resources, there's simply no point in worrying about it. The rich could casually throw away their semi-used goods and "the poor" (who are without want since everything is practically free) can scoop up the refuse and live like kings. The problem you imagine contradicts itself.
I don't have to show that technology generated more tragedy than the status quo. That's putting words in my mouth. I've said that these changes cause upheavals which tend to cause tragedy for some. My theory is that it is possible, without treading carefully, for a very large upheaval to cause a lot of tragedy.
I do not accept your imagination as historical evidence.
What a load of nonsense. I suppose you think Steve Jobs lived on his $1 a year salary?
Owning or controllingwealth while declaring minimal "income" is the basis of most individual tax avoidance in the Western world.
So with that handwave, I should be able to compare a distance to a speed. Or maybe a speed to an acceleration. Try building anything with that attitude. Let's compare an integer to a character string and expect a meaningful result!
As for Steve Jobs, income != salary. Ever hear of this thing called stocks? Or income producing assets? The wealthy tend to accumulate those sort of things, which is how they stay rich - they use their income to buy income, while avoiding costs like taxes.
Yes, yes, I've heard the rationale for a progressive tax system.
My country has a progressive tax system. There has been no budget for 4 years, and the bills are NOT being paid. Instead, we're borrowing from the future, so we're gambling everything on a hypothetical future person to pay the balance. (Extremely unfair to him)
The property of fairness is distinctly different from the property of "fiscally sound". An unfair tax system can pay the bills, and a fair tax system can fail to pay the bills.
There's nothing about a "fair" tax system that innately makes it better at paying the bills. The claim that a "fair" tax system pays the bills is contradicted by the reality that the "fair" tax system my country has now has failed to pay the bills.
In economic terms, people innovate on the assumption that demand will be created. This is aside from the fact that much human endeavour is done for no particular economic end in sight (writing a poem, falling in love, discovering a new galaxy, running a marathon).
And that is why demand theory is wrong. The product preceded the demand, and in our universe, an effect cannot come before its cause. That, or we've discovered something that will excite many physicists. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_%28physics%29)
Personally, I'll take the simpler explanation.
Demand is not a cause. It is an effect. It is an effect of inventing a product that has value - one that saves labor or time, is more entertaining, or whatever the heck a person might value it for.
But the fact remains that without that demand subsequently being created, it doesn't matter how or what you innovate. If I invented the world's ultimate mousetrap tomorrow but didn't get the pricing or marketing or distribution right, it could flop completely.
This is a correct observation, and it completely fits with the economic understanding I've described - demand follows value, a property of the created item. (value is difficult to measure, and the desire to measure it correctly is the field of economics)
Demand theory is based entirely on this one observation, and by ignoring everything else, it reversed cause and effect. But wrong is wrong - wet roads do not cause rain. Demand does not create products. Products create demand.
I fail to see how guaranteed public school funding improves accountability.
Here, I'm going to pay you a fixed amount regardless of your results. If you work hard and put in overtime, you will get the exact same result as if you slack off and sleep all day.
It's not clear to me how this system will motivate people to put in their best efforts, but I'm supposed to believe this will work with public education.
Slashdot Mirror
Your assumption that returning to the tax rates of the previous century will break something (when dropping those taxes did nothing at all) is the one that requires further proof.
Errr, no.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maximum_Federal_Tax_Rate_on_Long_Term_Capital_Gains_%281972_-_2012%29.jpg
1980 is associated with the Reagan recovery, and 1996 is roughly when the Internet boom occurred.
But that said, America's voted for high spending, let them have the high taxes and the crappy economy that goes with it.
It's not a good idea, but it's what the people want.
And yes, the republicans have filibustered most attempts at defining our spending over the last 4 years, but there's an act of congress that addresses spending and has budget in the name:
A law with "budget" in the name is not necessarily a budget.
I personally don't care for Obama much, but partisan hacks like yourself are exactly the reason this country is in trouble in the first place. You spend your time worshiping Bush rather than addressing real issues, which forces me to defend Obama rather than deal with his very real flaws. Attack him for something bad (drone strikes, wiretapping...) and we've can try to make progress. But continue to attack him for the mess Bush left and you're just wasting everyone's time.
Worshipping Bush? Where? Partisan hack, speak for yourself.
There's a double standard deployed here, where Bush left a mess for Obama, but Clinton apparently left no mess for Bush (9/11 is completely Bush's fault, huh?). Blaming Bush for the state of everything when we've reached Obama's 2nd term is hilarious when no such standard was applied for Bush.
Asking for objective standards to be applied to both parties is not worship or partisan.
Pointing out the fiscal irresponsibility of the party in power is not partisan. They're in power, they're supposed to be using it in the public interest, which does not include racking up deficits and debt.
So the key point I'm taking away here is that we shouldn't blame Democrats for failed policies. It's the Republican's fault for not blocking them, or failing to repeal them afterwards.
That's an ... interesting type of responsibility.
If circumstances, such as labour-saving technology, change faster than the system can adapt, no new system is required for there to be problems. It's not a hidden assumption I've snuck into the discussion, it's what I've been saying the entire time since I wrote: "we are in danger of transitioning to post-scarcity technology without transitioning to a post-scarcity economy" in my first post in this thread.
Technology change is driven by human ingenuity. The system's ability to adapt is driven by human ingenuity. Claiming that humans can drive technological change faster than humans can adapt to it is questionable - if humans start failing to adapt, the economic and political systems become unstable, which slows down technological change.
There are negative feedback loops that make this system stabler than you imagined.
They weren't particularly relevant because we're talking about a potential future, not the past, and those examples don't include changes as extreme as our hypothetical example. They are relevant to the overall discussion of structural unemployment though.
An extreme change that you had to assume. I'll admit that if you want to imagine a fantasy world, reality does not apply. But if you want to treat the fantasy world as a possible future of our reality, you must deal with reality's factors.
it seemed a lot like you were trying to present your analogy, then act as if I were arguing against that analogy rather than what we're actually arguing about. The analogies were completely superfluous. Stating that I didn't understand the examples in your analogies was just insulting. I understand them fine, I don't understand what contorted logic actually makes them analogous to the discussion at hand. Maybe if you could explain that in some satisfactory manner, I wouldn't think that they were just straw men.
We both know you're not arguing there is such a thing as a light speed car, we're discussing a robotic dystopia. Treating your robotic dystopia as a "light speed car" is a metaphor, which is analogy.
Calling my metaphor a strawman argument is wrong categorization, because no one is going to confuse a light speed car for a robotic dystopia. Strawmans are misdirection, arguing against what you did not say, and confusing you or the audience as to what your argument is. A clear analogy is misdirection only if you have no clue what you're arguing about. If the analogy is inapplicable, it's a false analogy, not a strawman. Using the wrong label is a wrong understanding.
Trouble is, I think your entire analogy is irrelevant. If you could clarify what parts of our argument is the "falling object", what "falling" means in this context, and what the "escape velocity" means in the argument. Just so you know, "aka" is short for "also know as". Escape velocity is not "also known as" "going up", but that's a really minor nitpick compared to the silly analogy.
Use of AKA was wrong. My bad. I should have used IOW or e.g.
"Falling" is a "negative" force. "Going up" is a "positive" force. There is an object we're applying these forces to. "Escape velocity" is an endstate for the object, which requires the application of a lot of net "positive" force. Throw a baseball upwards by arm, it will not achieve escape velocity, there is insufficient "positive" force to overcome the "negative" force of gravity. But use a space rocket to push the baseball, and it can achieve escape velocity.
Similarly, you point to robotic automation as a "positive" force that takes us to the dystopian endstate. Our human society is the "object". I've been describing various "negative" forces that work against robotic automation bringing us to a dystopian endstate. To prove that the dystopia is likely,, you must show that there is enough "positive" force to overcome any "negative" forces involved.
Furthermore, by lookin
Sure, the Republicans took control of Congress soon after, but they didn't make any drastic changes through the remainder of Clinton's terms.
Welfare reform? Blocked Hillarycare?
Whereas for Bush II, he is credited with his tax cuts, and the war in Iraq. Both which started under a Republican majority.
Followed by a Democrat controlled congress who got elected due to Republican fiscal irresponsibility, but increased deficit spending after coming into power. After which, a Democrat-driven fiscal policy exploded and triggered a recession. (idea was to subsidize mortgages to people who weren't good credit risks; this encouraged all sorts of risky and stupid loaning)
Followed by trillion dollar gov't deficits when Democrats controlled the legislature and the presidency. (And Senator Obama voted for that level of spending, so he's not off the hook).
At this point in time, we've gone 4 years without a budget (entire Obama 1st term), with Democrats blocking any attempts to define one.
Our Great Recession (or Depression 2.0) can be easily laid at the feet of Democratic politicians, but Blame Bush (TM).
The value is tied to the ship, which can be destroyed. The character survives, but its value is not involved in the calculations.
1. I said debt, but I did not say national debt, and I also referred to it as spending in the same sentence. All spending is debt, until you offset it with revenue. If you fail to offset it, it will become deficit spending which contributes to the national debt, but that's really off-topic since we're talking about spending without regard to government revenue, only in comparison to household income.
I now see what you mean, but the words mean different things. "Debt" is not interchangeable with "spending". Debt is an obligation; there is no obligation to spend money, though there is an obligation to pay back loans. Spending money that you have does not create debt; you just reduce your savings/reserves. Borrowing money is what creates debt.
2. I addressed the financial solvency of the federal government:
If we assume tax rates and revenue are a static problem, and that it won't have any effect to double taxes on certain types of income. (ex: Capital gains)
What're you going to do if that doesn't work as expected?
3. Your claim that the government is insolvent is belied by reality, where our government can still sell bonds at a lower interest rate than anyone else in existence. Why do they have a better credit rating than you can ever hope to achieve, if they understand math so much worse than you?
They don't have a credit rating better than me. I've repaid all my debts. The US, has not. The US credit rating is eroding as creditors realize the US gov't is not serious about paying back the debt.
Yes, they can get away with it because they own printing presses and can "create" money out of thin air. What actually happens is that they're using inflation as a wealth tax (that hurts the middle class the most) to bankroll the deficit spending. If you earn $100k/year, but it doesn't have the buying power of $50k/year 10 years ago, that is not prosperity.
Appealing to an entity that hasn't planned a budget in 4 years as a "math smart" is also pretty hilarious. Go back and stick your head in the sand. Obama's prosperity is juuuuust around the corner. Ignore the unemployment rates or the lack of growth - that's all Bush's fault, and Obama just needs 4 more years...
PS: Funny how Bush II's economy wasn't Clinton's fault, or that Clinton's economy can't be credited to Bush I.
Yes, and as I said, it's an invalid comparison because they switched types of averages halfway through.
No, you said it was a comparison between income and debt. Spending is not deficit or debt. Incorrect.
Indeed, and what valid point about fairness or desirability do you draw from the fact that median income (the middle class, if you will) is so very, very far below mean income?
Whatever valid point you wish to draw from that, it does not excuse the financial insolvency of the federal gov't - which harms everyone, but especially the poor who are made dependent on welfare payments.
The problem I see with your pragmatic approach is that the natural tendency of gov't is towards control, power, and tyranny.
It is necessary to push back hard on these things, or they simply try again when they feel they can get away with it. (They still try in either case, but a tougher stance buys more time, as they know they won't get away with it)
Liberty, or death, as some ancient white guys liked to put it. "Peace for our time" often turns out to be no peace at all.
First, you're comparing median income, to mean debt. The mean debt per person is 20257.23, while the mean income is 48520.90, So government spending is roughly 40% of our money, not 105% of our money.
You need to re-read the post you responded to.
Total government spending in the United States has grown to $6.2 trillion (2012), and with ~115 million households thats ~$54000 per household.
The median income for those 115 million households was $53000.
It's a comparison between gov't spending and household income, not gov't debt and income.
There is a comparison between mean and median, but that can still be used to make a valid point about the fairness or desirability of our current state of affairs.
send the bible belt soldiers to police the godless liberal traitors in california
send the black soldiers to police the cracka racists in the south
send the northeastern soldiers to police the whackjob traitors in the midwest
send the deep southern soldiers to police the coward yankee bastards up north.
That assumes you've got neatly segregated military units with homogenous biases.
It also requires very careful information control to each of those units. "Wait, the US army just killed friends and family back home" is going to get people thinking.
It's still possible to divide and conquer as you say, but it's harder to pull off than in a low information flow society.
The proper solution is that both people and government need to try work with each other as partners toward a common goal, both 'sides' need to calm down and negotiate with mutual interest in the concerns (and rights) of the 'other side'.
The government is the servant of the people. The proper solution is for the gov't to back down.
Anything else is giving the gov't more power than it was delegated, which tracks the parable of the camel and the tent.
I don't believe that robotics makes this system inevitable.
Does robotics even make this political system more likely? Because that's yet another hidden assumption you've snuck into this discussion. (assuming the rise of a political system that imposes artificial scarcity)
Also, the examples of the past and present you're providing aren't really all that relevant.
I pointed out that robotic automation is 80 years old, and it's "not relevant"? If robotic automation is not relevant to robotics, what is?
Would you like to slap a timeframe on your predicted future, by the way? 100 years? 200 years?
Ok. I'm looking at a falling object... Another strawman analogy (one that seems to work on the premise that achieving escape velocity is the same thing as going up). Claiming that I don't understand the analogy of the light speed car is yet another fallacious statement. You're playing at lecturing down to me as if I were a child. It's transparent and poor rhetoric. We each seem to believe that the other doesn't understand the forces involved in our scenario of rapidly advancing technology. Of course, you're the one whose claim requires forces that will somehow act to protect the masses from negative consequences from large-scale social and economic upheaval. From my point of view, you've failed to identify those forces. As far as I can tell, those forces consist only of your own confidence that things will turn out the way you hope.
Wow. Where to even begin?
1. A strawman fallacy is one where I make up an argument and claim that it is your argument. When it happens, it means I misrepresented what you claimed. I made an analogy, whether good or bad, it's not a strawman. Categorical error.
2. "Going up" was meant to clarify that the escape velocity vector was in the opposite direction of "falling down". Are you trying to say that the analogy doesn't make any sense, or are you trying to say that it isn't applicable to your argument? I'm going to assume the latter, but you criticized an irrelevant aspect of my analogy, which does not demonstrate understanding.
3. If you are good at accounting for different forces, you have not demonstrated it in our discussion. For example, you said increased complexity increasing failure rates was fallacious. It is not - unless you want to claim that simple systems are more likely to fail than complex systems.
Your example of ball bearings compared different technologies; the new technology provided the reliability increase, not the complexity of the system. Complexity in of itself is not a desirable thing, it means more pre-requisites, costs, and more points of failure- but it is often necessary for improved capabilities and performance. You conflated the benefit of a new technology (+ force) with the downside of complexity (- force), crediting complexity for the overall net gain. Wrong.
Technology can reduce the downsides of complexity, but complex systems are just overall more fragile. A robotic eco-system is going to be an incredibly complex system; and assuming it can and will be perfected is a large leap of faith.
Next, let's look at how well you understand my points:
You've said over and over again that you don't think my scenario can happen, and you seem to have two separate arguments. One is that robots doing human jobs is impossible in the first place.
Nope. I claimed that robots are only capable of doing a subset of human jobs. Robots are doing some human jobs now, where it is economical. I thought you understood me when you brought up how robots are built to fill niches, but apparently you didn't. Robots can displace humans for some jobs, but they cannot replace until they can match the versatility of the human package. (this includes cognitive ability)
ATMs displaced tellers, they didn't replace. In the
Tax changes have never trickled to the employees.
"never" is not something you've actually measured.
So you disagree with my opinion, but refuse to give your own. Just another asshole nay-sayer. People like you are the reason the US is a failure.
"I disagree" is not enough of an opinion for you?
Fine. Income taxes reduce employee income. "employer-paid" taxes increase the cost of employees and result in companies hiring less people. An unemployed person has no income at all, and it's an effect of that "employer-paid" tax - which still hurts employees despite the label.
If the Fair Tax did away with the SS tax (while remaining revenue neutral, big IF), then that's a good thing - if employees are cheaper to hire, there will be more profitable jobs to hire them for. More jobs is higher demand, which will result in the price (wages) for employees going up, given the same supply of workers.
If adding the tax can hurt employees, dropping the tax can most definitely un-hurt (or benefit) employees.
There, my stinkin' opinion.
In the long run, the employee will be paid the minimum the company can pay to get the results. Tax changes have never trickled to the employees.
Individual companies pay the minimum they can.
Competition with other companies raises the minimum wage they can actually hire workers for. "never" is not something you've actually measured.
As for the rest of your thoughts, /shrug. I'm not looking for the ideal Fair Tax. I'm pointing out the inaccuracies in objections.
/shrug on your experience with the Fair Tax. It's an idea with potential, not that there's any shortage of ideas with potential. Whether it is a tax increase or not depends entirely on the numbers, and those numbers aren't meaningful unless it becomes law.
No, they don't. I've worked at a place where health benefit costs increased, and pay didn't decrease.
Congrats. You got a payraise.
I've worked at a place where they cut health benefits, and they too did not increase pay.
That's a paycut. You're doing the same work for less compensation. It's just (generally) easier to stomach a loss of benefits than a loss of monetary income.
In practice, companies *do not* adjust pay when a tax changes. They "might" but then they "might" all agree to cut CEO pay by 99% and increase the pay for all based on the savings. That's just as likely as all the tax savings ending up in your paycheck.
Right, because changing that pay instantly could trigger some personnel losses that would be hard to compensate for. Better to eat the cost in the short term and make gradual adjustments. (or, pocket the profits and make gradual adjustments)
But the cost of employing you (or me) does change with the new laws, and in the long run, an employee will never be paid more than what he earns the company. If laws make it unprofitable to hire employees, we *will* see more unemployment as businesses will cut away all of those unprofitable jobs.
To state my position again, I'm worried that we will reach a point where we have post-scarcity capable technology, but artificially imposed scarcity combined with a structurally-imposed inability for people to work around the system of technology leading to virtual slavery, or mass poverty.
Then we are not discussing a problem with robotics technology, but the rise of a nasty political system. Do you believe that robotics make this political system inevitable?
As for the slave 2000 years ago imagining owning an iPhone, no they couldn't. Neither could a King in that time (although both the King and probably especially the slave almost certainly could and did imagine having some way of communicating with people instantaneously at long distances). So, yes, modern communications technologies have become widespread and relatively affordable. I don't think that proves any part of your argument.
The observation is that automation and technology have increased standards of living and allowed even advanced technology to be distributed to the common man.
This is the opposite direction to get to your anticipated dystopia. You're looking at a falling object and concluding that it will achieve escape velocity (aka going up) ... somehow. You dismissed the light-speed car, but you didn't understand the analogy - if you don't account for all the forces involved correctly, you can end up with absurd (and wrong) conclusions.
Says the one arguing from the position that the invisible hand of the market will prevent human suffering.
Quote me where I said that, or where that was implied by my arguments. Strawman.
It's also funny being lectured on human suffering when your beloved solution of socialism is the biggest murderer of human beings in the previous century. National and international variants treated humans as meat and industrialized murder.
Moore's law is gonna bite you in the backside hard.
Moore's "law" is not a law of physics, but a neat observation of how transistor sizes has decreased exponentially for the time period we've been observing it. It's not guaranteed to go on forever, though we've given it a good run. (note they had to downward adjust the doubling period)
The law of diminishing returns, on the other hand, is a physical law of sorts, and it is kicking in. It's getting harder to increase processor frequency without using fancy cooling technology. There are still gains from smaller transistors, but they're smaller than they used to be - hence the move towards multi-core CPUs.
The entire history of silicon, screen and keyboard computing (to me) isn't any older than that. If it took only 40 years for computers to take over the world and I can reasonably guess that the number of computers since then increase exponentially, is it really wrong to assume that over the next 40 years we won't create a machine with AI?
An army of retards aren't going to out-think a PhD. A computer isn't even a retard. You can't just stack a billion calculators together and call that intelligence.
Self-awareness doesn't seem to be a function of processing power, so the ability to throw more transistors at the problem isn't a guarantee of success.
I know this isn't a disproof, it's just a justified skepticism of those who think AI is just around the corner.
These back and forths are getting entirely too long, so I'm focusing on just 2 points. This does not mean I agree with you on the other points, just that it is too time consuming to do a point-by-point rebuttal.
Point 1: Jobs Not Zero Sum.
I am so tired of that phrase. What meaning is it even supposed to have in the context of the job market? Not being a zero sum game is not remotely the same thing as boundless.
Sure. Along with want, let's not forget that jobs scale with magic fairy dust and unicorn kisses. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there's a scale from necessities out to wild, fantastic, impractical desires. The buying power is always going to belong to the necessities, needs and basic luxuries. ...
Jobs not being zero sum means that your core problem of "robotics replace jobs, reducing overall number of jobs, leaving a lot of people with no possible job" is a faulty prediction.
For robots to reduce the overall number of jobs, a robot taking a job must permanently make another human unemployed at some ratio (1:1, 100:1, take your pick). This is zero-sum thinking - because you're thinking that there's a finite number of jobs that can ever be filled.
As my earlier posts have demonstrated, jobs are not zero-sum. For your doomsday to take place, the overall number of jobs must decrease, but jobs not being zero-sum means that robots displacing humans in jobs is insufficient to create the result you're thinking of.
Consider this helpful thought experiment - Every robot needs maintenance; as the number of robots filling menial human tasks increases, the amount of robot maintenance needed also increases. You can make robots to maintain the robots, but those robots need maintenance as well - and you've increased the complexity of the system. In engineering, complexity increases failure rate exponentially. (System uptime is dependent on all links not failing) Failure needs fixing, or you have a pile of non-working robots. All of this maintenance is "want", and translates into human jobs. Human jobs scales with the number of robots.
We also have real life experience that automation does not destroy jobs - the simple proof is that with the increased amount of automation over the past 50 years, unemployment (in the US) has still stayed around the single digits despite population growth. There are more jobs despite increased productivity. The average worker is far more productive than his counterpart 100 years ago, and this has made him [i]richer, not poorer[/i]. (There are political factors that can make him poorer, but you can't blame those on technology).
Point 2: The "perfectly" automated world is post-scarcity AND has "nigh-infinite" resources.
What contradiction? Are you talking about that infinite resources nonsense? That was your strawman, not my argument. I think that the "assumptions" I'm making about the possible and probable future of technological progress are pretty good. My pessimistic assumptions about human nature in such a situation are based on pretty sound historical and current evidence. I would say that you, for example, are a pretty good example that, if my scenario does come to pass, there will be people denying it's happening as it happens, sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting "la la la, I can't hear you". If it does happen, I wonder, what evidence would you accept as proof that it really is happening?
How does the robot displace the human worker? By being cheaper. If robots are to displace the majority of human workers, they must be more productive than even the cheapest worker.
This means robots must be terribly productive; to the point that they can produce goods terribly cheap. Terribly cheap goods represents huge increases of standard of living - give a beggar $1, and that would be enough in robot-workers world to buy enough goods to live like a king. That's how prod
I can simulate that right now with a motion detector and an audio board. Bonus points for facial ID (or maybe detect the smartphone?)
That's not AI. "Convincing" is insufficient.
All jobs are not about pay. Are you a good parent because you get paid more? Do you take care of your elderly relatives to get paid?
Kids don't pay their parents to be parented. But kids are expected to give their parents some sort of respect/support due to that debt, and that is right.
An abusive parent can rightly be expected to get less respect/support from his kids due to bad parenting. There's no law to enforce this, but we recognize the moral obligations involved here.
Family also plays by very different rules than other relationships. Teachers are not family.
Teaching is about community and results. It requires a certain amount of money, but too much will damage the system.
So there are times when you need to cut education funding or it'll cause damage. I'll take that. My state's education system is damaged and needs a cut in funding before it gets any worse.
The one we've been discussing, where robots are doing all the real labour and humans, for the most part, can only find employment doing demeaning and uncompetitive make-work or can't find employment at all.
Your projected problem, not to be confused with a current or likely problem.
But it doesn't contradict my point, which is that usage of those things is greatly reduced. I haven't argued that employment for humans will vanish, just that the majority won't be able to find jobs and that ...
Usage of these things are reduced? http://www.worldometers.info/bicycles/>
Look at the graph halfway down the page, we're building more bikes and cars, which reflects more usage, not less. Your assumptions about what is currently happening contradict reality. This should be a hint to you that your perception is faulty. If your perception of the *present* is faulty, your predictions about the future may also need some re-examination.
You define all government activities as socialism. I define socialism as gov't control of the economy, to be contrasted to a free markets. (Where the gov't sets the rules, but does not try to control the outcomes) My definition leaves some gov't activity outside the scope of socialism (such as diplomacy, policing, and legislation).
No, there's no perfect free market, but it is the free-est markets that have created the most wealth for humanity.
If socialism makes you uncomfortable, ...
It doesn't merely make me uncomfortable, I despise it. National socialism introduced the world to industrialized mass murder. It's all rooted in how the socialist perceives the link between a gov't and the people. An "elite" who sees of the mass of humanity as useless "meat" is one that has no qualms about sending them to the glue factory. "for the greater good"
People are not horses. A horse is property; but humans aren't. Humans create jobs; horses do not. (Human ownership of horses creates jobs, but it is the human creating the job, not the horse).
This comes back to assumptions - you assume some limited supply of jobs. Again, jobs are not zero sum. Jobs come from human want, and human want is a limitless pit. Compare the richest guy you can find with the poorest guy you can find. The difference in their possessions is "want". Multiply that by however many billion people to get a rough guess of how much work needs to be done before that human want starts to be filled and there might not be new jobs. (And the rich guy still wants more! Want is unlimited, and jobs scale with want)
The society you imagine where all humanity's wants are satisfied without a corresponding amount of human jobs is a post-scarcity society - by definition, this is a a society with nigh INFINITE resources. In that world, all of our economic theories no longer apply, because our economic knowledge is all based on the distribution of scarce goods.
Since that society has so many resources, there's simply no point in worrying about it. The rich could casually throw away their semi-used goods and "the poor" (who are without want since everything is practically free) can scoop up the refuse and live like kings. The problem you imagine contradicts itself.
I don't have to show that technology generated more tragedy than the status quo. That's putting words in my mouth. I've said that these changes cause upheavals which tend to cause tragedy for some. My theory is that it is possible, without treading carefully, for a very large upheaval to cause a lot of tragedy.
I do not accept your imagination as historical evidence.
What a load of nonsense. I suppose you think Steve Jobs lived on his $1 a year salary? Owning or controllingwealth while declaring minimal "income" is the basis of most individual tax avoidance in the Western world.
So with that handwave, I should be able to compare a distance to a speed. Or maybe a speed to an acceleration. Try building anything with that attitude. Let's compare an integer to a character string and expect a meaningful result!
As for Steve Jobs, income != salary. Ever hear of this thing called stocks? Or income producing assets? The wealthy tend to accumulate those sort of things, which is how they stay rich - they use their income to buy income, while avoiding costs like taxes.
Yes, yes, I've heard the rationale for a progressive tax system.
My country has a progressive tax system. There has been no budget for 4 years, and the bills are NOT being paid. Instead, we're borrowing from the future, so we're gambling everything on a hypothetical future person to pay the balance. (Extremely unfair to him)
The property of fairness is distinctly different from the property of "fiscally sound". An unfair tax system can pay the bills, and a fair tax system can fail to pay the bills.
There's nothing about a "fair" tax system that innately makes it better at paying the bills. The claim that a "fair" tax system pays the bills is contradicted by the reality that the "fair" tax system my country has now has failed to pay the bills.
In economic terms, people innovate on the assumption that demand will be created. This is aside from the fact that much human endeavour is done for no particular economic end in sight (writing a poem, falling in love, discovering a new galaxy, running a marathon).
And that is why demand theory is wrong. The product preceded the demand, and in our universe, an effect cannot come before its cause. That, or we've discovered something that will excite many physicists. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_%28physics%29)
Personally, I'll take the simpler explanation.
Demand is not a cause. It is an effect. It is an effect of inventing a product that has value - one that saves labor or time, is more entertaining, or whatever the heck a person might value it for.
But the fact remains that without that demand subsequently being created, it doesn't matter how or what you innovate. If I invented the world's ultimate mousetrap tomorrow but didn't get the pricing or marketing or distribution right, it could flop completely.
This is a correct observation, and it completely fits with the economic understanding I've described - demand follows value, a property of the created item. (value is difficult to measure, and the desire to measure it correctly is the field of economics)
Demand theory is based entirely on this one observation, and by ignoring everything else, it reversed cause and effect. But wrong is wrong - wet roads do not cause rain. Demand does not create products. Products create demand.
I fail to see how guaranteed public school funding improves accountability.
Here, I'm going to pay you a fixed amount regardless of your results. If you work hard and put in overtime, you will get the exact same result as if you slack off and sleep all day.
It's not clear to me how this system will motivate people to put in their best efforts, but I'm supposed to believe this will work with public education.