Re: Population problem? Solved!

From: Jim Blair (jeb_at_wisc.edu)
Date: 03/16/05 

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 15:13:42 -0600

"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote :

>
> You're really attempting to solve the wrong problem;
> and of course coming up with exactly a backward
> solution as a result. As automation continues to
> make inroads into the need for human labor,
> available jobs will grow fewer and fewer, and are
> already doing so.

Hi,

Isn't that an argument against a retirement system based on a wage tax? If
you are correct (and I would not claim otherwise)
then "personal savings accounts" (that is, individual investiments) would
be better. They would provide retirement income derived from the returns to
capital rather than from a labor/wage tax such as FICA.
>
> The problem that needs solving is: what social
> changes do you make that allow support of an idle
> population which can produce abundantly, but doesn't
> need human effort for that production? Do the owners
> of the machines end up with all the wealth, ....

If your claim is true, they will. Or at least that will be the long term
limiting case.

>....or do we
> change that wealth by social engineering (or violent
> revolution, very much a kind of social engineering)
> to be something society as a whole, rather than rent
> collectors by accident of history, call their own?

Or simply encourage ever more of the population to get into the act by being
a "rent collector". And for everyone to own enough capital to live from the
interest and dividends by the time they retire?

>
> Once you solve that problem, the retirement age will
> start to slide earlier, not later, and at some point
> people will "work for a living" only as a kind of
> hobby or for the love of the task.
....
>
> This kind of change is happening fast enough [there
> are whole factories in Japan whose need for human
> labor is already close to zero, there are robots
> already that do intensely personal services like
> surgery], that the forecast "collapse of the Social
> Security system" may well be overtaken by events,
> and instead we'll see the "collapse of working for
> a living as a way of life" long before the social
> security trust funds run dry.

But it will "run dry" sooner if wages are replaced by interest and dividends
and capital gains as the main sources of incomes.

> Sadly for the right wingers who think their model of
> ever increasing concentration of wealth can be
> prolonged indefinitely, historically that hasn't
> worked out too well for them, the guillotine being
> one obvious downside that has been demonstrated to
> be an effective social counterforce to ravening
> greed.

I bet the USA today has a wider distribution of wealth than France had in
1787. But the difference is in mobility.
>
> This problem of redistributing the fruits of
> non-human labor comes down eventually to a choice
> between a profound shift to redistribution via
> socialism, or a profound shift to redistribution via
> street violence or open revolution.

Or neither of the above. As long as the "poor" know (or think) that they
can move up the ladder by their own efforts, there is little chance of your
revolution. And if the more ambitious of the downtrodden DO move up, that
deprives the rest of the poor of their leadership, and provides those on top
with additional talent.

....

> Look for growing support by the right wing political
> factions, of disarming populations, as a measure of
> how obvious the problem has become even to them.

Think the Right will turn against the NRA? Fat chance.

>
> Iraq prior to the most recent invasion was attempting
> to make that model fly, with some temporary success
> but an inevitable explosion in the long term. Pay
> some attention to the near term success of the wealth
> hoarding, socially repressive rulers of Saudi Arabia,
> as a harbinger of first world events inevitably to
> follow.
>
> HTH
>
> xanthian.
>

I say a guy born poor in the US has a better chance of becoming a
millionaire than a poor Saudi has of becoming a member of the royal family.

                     ,,,,,,,
_______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________
                       (_)
jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) Madison Wisconsin
USA. This message was brought to you using biodegradable
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