A new paradigm on workers and productivity

[UtahBill]

Same here. Both my parents were college grads, my mother had a masters and my dad had a Phd, I just always assumed that going to college was the thing to do, and my son, who is now in college, also had the same expectations. My discussions with my son about college were never "do you want to go to college", they were always more like "what do you want to major in in college?"

But not everyone has that same expectation. When my son was a senior in high school I was talking with a customer who had a daughter who was also a high school senior, I brought up college and she said "I'm just glad that my daughter hasn't mentioned that yet". Honestly, I was shocked, but I shouldn't have been. Unless the parent had expectations of of the child going to college, there is no reason that the child should have such expectations either. I can't personally imagine a parent not wanting their kid to go to college, but may people don't feel that it is important or that it should be expected. I would think that every parent would hope that their child did better than the parent did, but apparently a lot of parents don't want to be "shown up" by their children. It's a family cultural thing I guess.

My parents were the worst kind of Democrats, they wanted all their kids to fail equally.....
especially my mother, she was resentful that we kids were getting more school than she got, but she only got thru 3rd grade before her parents put her to work. Granted, she had reason to resent her parents, but her kids? I did 3 years of college, none of my siblings did any....
My wife and both our kids have degrees, wife and son have masters, daughter bachelors....

 

[Dittohead not!]

Sure, I see what you are saying, and it's valid, but things are changing today faster than ever before. First of all, we already have most of our basic comfort needs met. We have airconditioning, we have heat, housing, tranportation, decent medical care, etc.

This is true in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and quite a few other places. It is by no means true for the world's seven billion plus human beings.

Could the new technology be used to provide a decent lifestyle for people in places like sub Saharan Africa, or the people ruled by an iron fist in the Middle East? What are the odds that it will be used in that way?

 

[gavinfielder]

No your not.
Im guaranteed to a job because i can work for myself? That is not a job. That is not a guarantee.

Entirely true, but you're--and the apostrophe in I'm, while I'm at it. I'm sorry; it seemed a waste to leave an otherwise succinctly truthful post with blaring grammatical error.

This is true in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and quite a few other places. It is by no means true for the world's seven billion plus human beings.

Could the new technology be used to provide a decent lifestyle for people in places like sub Saharan Africa, or the people ruled by an iron fist in the Middle East? What are the odds that it will be used in that way?

When those regions catch up with us, pretty high. First comes peace, then comes development, and then a society can work on its quality of life.

 

[What if...?]

I agree with every bit of that except for the part that I bolded.

Ya, the Jetsons model is ultimately what I believe we will have to go to. It's a little extreme and we probably won't quite see it taken to that extreme for the next few hundred years, but it is a model that we are going to need to start progressing towards, possibly within this decade. We have actually been progressing towards that model ever since the invention the wheel and mastery of controling fire.


George Jetson was the only income earner in the family, and he only worked three hours a day, one day a week, and due to the high development of technology his family was able to live like royalty. If he worked 60 hours a week, he may have been richer, but his standard of living could not have been any higher, and 19 other families would have been either impoverished due to lack of work, or they would have been on public assistance, sucking of the 60 hours of production that George would have put in. Think about it, whats the point of working 60 hours a week and having the revenue from 57 of those hours sucked away from you to be distributed to people who don't work at all?

To accomplish the Jetson model, it is going to take government intervention in the free market. Nothing terrible drastic at first. Probably a more progressive tax system do disincentivise people from earning more money than they can spend, and possibly lower the working hours from 40 to a lower number before employers have to pay overtime - thus the employee would be encouraged not to work excess hours and the employer would be encouraged to to expect employees from working excess hours. This would of course require businesses to hire more people than they would have otherwise, creating an ample supply of jobs. The increases in productivity due to technology will allow employers to pay the equivilent of a current 40 hour a week pay for a less than 40 hour a week workschedule.

The bolded was a bit to extreme on re-reading.

The idea is to.address issues of coercion through necessities. Gouging and that pressure that makes an employment relationship not ENTIRELY voluntary.

It's not wage slavery, but it's not exactly NOT wage slavery either.

Early anarchist writings on capitalism minus coercion of any kind are interesting.

 

[Dittohead not!]

Entirely true, but you're--and the apostrophe in I'm, while I'm at it. I'm sorry; it seemed a waste to leave an otherwise succinctly truthful post with blaring grammatical error.



When those regions catch up with us, pretty high. First comes peace, then comes development, and then a society can work on its quality of life.

this seems to be to be a chicken and egg sort of question. Which comes first, a decent standard of living, or peace?

 

[gavinfielder]

this seems to be to be a chicken and egg sort of question. Which comes first, a decent standard of living, or peace?

Peace. I don't see how it could be any different. Stability is a prerequisite of any development.

 

[Dittohead not!]

Peace. I don't see how it could be any different. Stability is a prerequisite of any development.

Yes, it is, and war, at least the sort of thing we're seeing in the Middle East just now, is born of want and desperation.

 

[gavinfielder]

Yes, it is, and war, at least the sort of thing we're seeing in the Middle East just now, is born of want and desperation.

...ok, so who's going to give them all the conveniences of modern society?

This isn't a catch-22. There always must be domestic stability before domestic development, and in the absence of a super-beneficent economic hegemon, domestic development before luxury.

 

[LizardofOz]

I don't have your answers, I just wanted to say how funny it is that republicans are realizing this now and it comes from the "no one wants to work for anything" narrative.

 

[gavinfielder]

I don't have your answers, I just wanted to say how funny it is that republicans are realizing this now and it comes from the "no one wants to work for anything" narrative.

That doesn't make any sense. The affect of technological innovation and its implications for the job market isn't being talked about in any political conversation, and certainly not from Republicans. Looking through this thread, even, there's no staunch republicans--plenty of libertarians, but no republicans. Granted, they're always conspicuously absent from academic discussion, but this isn't a political issue right now.

I probably don't understand what you're getting at.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

It basically requires that increases in efficiency and productivity go primarily to wages instead of profits, as they currently do. Technology was supposed to free mankind from labor. What has happened is it has freed businesses from labor COSTS.

Very important point. Unless there are sufficient feedback loops in the symbiotic relationship between what can still be vaguely described as capital and labor that allow labor to grow and prosper alongside capital, the entire system will eventually trip over itself and fall. The time of this actually occurring is increasingly less far off. For more than thirty years now, the greedy piglets have been taking away more and more and more and keeping it for themselves. And all the while the wages, benefits, working conditions, and prospects for everyone else have suffered. The piglets latest proposed solution for this is to give more to themselves while inflicting more suffering on the rest. They call this "austerity". They admit that this will be painful, but note that it is necessary in the light of past excesses -- all of which were in fact committed by them. This boils down to just more externalization of costs -- we benefit, you pay. Unless we all wake up here and start insisting that the fat cats cut it out, we will be in for some serious problems in relatively short order.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

The point that I was getting at is that insurance itself warps the supply and demand factors in healthcare pricing by eliminating the need for the consumer to price shop.

Are consumers qualified to price shop in a health care market? Do you take your car to the cheapest mechanic? Would you hire the cheapest lawyer in town to represent you in a serious legal matter? Low-bid contracts are appropriate when you are purchasing a product that is simple and standardized -- such as paper clips. Health care by contrast is complex and individualized. The typical consumer does not at all have the knowledge or capacity needed to shop wisely on price or any other basis in any health care market. Hence, the typical health care consumer retains a GP/family-practice doctor to serve as gatekeeper and expert counsel on health care matters, and then does whatever that counsel advises. What is the point of having an expert on staff if you don't pay attention to what he or she says? The notion that an increase in rational health care outcomes would result from flooding the market with a bunch of incompetents is just not very realistic.

The $15 copay and low deductable totally distorts the mechanisms in the free market which keep prices in check.

Why should there be a free market for health care to begin with? Ask any of these insightful liberty-tarians and they will tell you that one of the chief functions of a "free market" is to RATION goods and services by price to those who most desire and can most afford them. Everybody else gets nothing. Is that really the sort of model that health care distribution should be based upon?

I have to largely blame government for this because government incentivises companies (by allowing tax deductions for employer provided health insurance) to compete for workers based upon offering them the $15 copay and $500 deductable insurance plan. It simply becomes cheaper for the employer to compete on insurance than it does for them to compete on wages and salaries.

Preaching to the choir. There simply aren't many defenders of employment-based health care left out there anymore. It was however a very good idea at the time. It got greatly expanded health care coverage to large numbers of people at very reasonable costs very quickly. Now, the time has come to change. That's where PPACA comes in. At last.

Getting back to your supply and demand thing, "good" insurance policies also increase demand unnessasarally. As long as the cost of going to the doc is subsidised by the insurance company/employer, there are lots and lots of people who run to the doctor every time that they need an excuse to get out of work or school or have the sniffles...

So, going to the doctor or dentist is generally in and of itself seen as a big plus by most people? It's only these ever-increasing copays and deductibles that keep folks from gaily spending every idle moment lost somewhere in the medical-industrial complex? I think you need to rework that idea a bit.

Our healthcare crises is mostly a "price of healtcare" crises. Resolve the price issue through free market mechanisms, then we no longer have a crises.

The first sentence is true. The second is a joke. The growing cost crisis is directly and in its entirety attributable to "free market mechanisms". No nation that has driven those out through establishment of a sane national health care system pays anything like the costs that we do for health care, and our overall health care is actually worse than theirs in the bargain.

 

[imagep]

Are consumers qualified to price shop in a health care market?

Absolulutely!!!

Why should there be a free market for health care to begin with? Ask any of these insightful liberty-tarians and they will tell you that one of the chief functions of a "free market" is to RATION goods and services by price to those who most desire and can most afford them. Everybody else gets nothing. Is that really the sort of model that health care distribution should be based upon?

Sure, and the grocery store rations food - yet we have PLENTY of fat people in the US and almost no one who starves to death.

The growing cost crisis is directly and in its entirety attributable to "free market mechanisms". No nation that has driven those out through establishment of a sane national health care system pays anything like the costs that we do for health care, and our overall health care is actually worse than theirs in the bargain.

Nope, the third party payer system (insurance) distorts the free market, and insurance companies and the healthcare industry are the only ones who benefit from such distortion.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

It's a work/income preference thing. As we become wealthier, the value of additional wealth becomes less and less and the value of personal time and recreational time increases, thus reducing the incentive to work longer hours.

Work-leisure preferences are a constantly operating elastic band that ever pulls and tugs at people even as all these wondrous "Econ 101" people lay everything at the feet of supply and demand. It's an important thing to keep an eye on in any discusion of employment. I was actually surprised to see it brought up, so good job there.

 

[imagep]

Work-leisure preferences are a constantly operating elastic band that ever pulls and tugs at people even as all these wondrous "Econ 101" people lay everything at the feet of supply and demand. It's an important thing to keep an eye on in any discusion of employment. I was actually surprised to see it brought up, so good job there.

Ya, I was the best C student in my econ 102 class.

 

[What if...?]

That doesn't make any sense. The affect of technological innovation and its implications for the job market isn't being talked about in any political conversation, and certainly not from Republicans. Looking through this thread, even, there's no staunch republicans--plenty of libertarians, but no republicans. Granted, they're always conspicuously absent from academic discussion, but this isn't a political issue right now.

I probably don't understand what you're getting at.

These ideas are.so contrary to our "mythology" regarding work that I'm surprised that this thread has remained civil.

It's amazing how many people start crying commie anytime one brings up the idea of paying people more for less work when they have no problem at all with working more for less.

And our politicians don't talk about it because it's going to affect their sponsors' bottom line. All of the possible solutions mean lower overall profits because labor will be more "expensive".

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Absolulutely!!!

Rocket-science for the masses!!! What among your life experiences has equipped you to function as a knowledgeable health care consumer? Is there a single thing? For most folks, there is not.

Sure, and the grocery store rations food - yet we have PLENTY of fat people in the US and almost no one who starves to death.

That's wonderful. Except that despite our supermarkets, people are more likely to die here from amenable causes than anywhere else in the developed world. Amenable deaths are those that could have been prevented simply by the timely application of standard medical care. And the actual question of course was whether RATIONING via free-market pricing mechanisms was the appropriate model for the distribution of health care. You didn't answer that question.

But since you did bring up grocery stores, they operate on a basis of high volume at very low profit margins. Is there a lesson for the health care industry to learn there somewhere?

Nope, the third party payer system (insurance) distorts the free market, and insurance companies and the healthcare industry are the only ones who benefit from such distortion.

You haven't yet accomplished Step-1 in explaining why a free market health care system should be tolerated to begin with. Complaints that it is being somehow compromised are offered in quite the wrong order.

For so long as they are going to be relied upon to operate, health insurance companies will need to make a reasonable profit from their operations. The insurance function however is an entirely separate matter. The purpose of any insurance scheme is to take what is otherwise expected to be an intermittent, lumpy, and expensive set of costs and turn them into a knowable, smooth and affordable set of costs through the age old process of risk-sharing. Risk, as you might know, is a BAD thing. So is any system that magnifies risk, whether that be free market or not.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Ya, I was the best C student in my econ 102 class.

Well, that's a lot more than most of these folks who try to preach "Econ 101" could claim!

Maybe if you'd not skipped so many of those money, credit, and banking classes and chapters, you could have eked out at least a B though.

 

[Dittohead not!]

These ideas are.so contrary to our "mythology" regarding work that I'm surprised that this thread has remained civil.

It's amazing how many people start crying commie anytime one brings up the idea of paying people more for less work when they have no problem at all with working more for less.

And our politicians don't talk about it because it's going to affect their sponsors' bottom line. All of the possible solutions mean lower overall profits because labor will be more "expensive".

Paying people more for less work is not the solution. The bottom line to all of this is that the reason for work is evolving away from a necessity to provide food, clothing, and shelter through labor. More and more, those things are being created with less and less human labor, and the trend is likely to expand as more and more sophisticated machines are invented to do the hard labor needed to make the things we need to survive. Even the luxury items, like televisions, video games, toys, ATVs, in short, all of the things we like to have but don't really need for survival are becoming available with less and less labor.

No, the reason to work is evolving away from creating goods and services we need and want, to a necessity to feel as if we're contributing to society. Working is in and of itself a human need, as people tend to destructive and self destructive behavior when they have nothing worthwhile to do.

So, the question becomes: As machines take over more and more of our labor, what do we do to fill the need to work?

 

[Cardinal Fang]

And our politicians don't talk about it because it's going to affect their sponsors' bottom line. All of the possible solutions mean lower overall profits because labor will be more "expensive".

The problem of course IS that profit has expanded specifically because labor has been deliberately made less expensive. With malice aforethought. This is the essence of the class warfare that has been going on now for more than thirty years. Complaints against rebalancing are a little like having moral objections to vaccinations on the basis of all those trillions of helpless viruses we would be killing.

 

[What if...?]

Paying people more for less work is not the solution. The bottom line to all of this is that the reason for work is evolving away from a necessity to provide food, clothing, and shelter through labor. More and more, those things are being created with less and less human labor, and the trend is likely to expand as more and more sophisticated machines are invented to do the hard labor needed to make the things we need to survive. Even the luxury items, like televisions, video games, toys, ATVs, in short, all of the things we like to have but don't really need for survival are becoming available with less and less labor.

No, the reason to work is evolving away from creating goods and services we need and want, to a necessity to feel as if we're contributing to society. Working is in and of itself a human need, as people tend to destructive and self destructive behavior when they have nothing worthwhile to do.

So, the question becomes: As machines take over more and more of our labor, what do we do to fill the need to work?

Job sharing of some sort. It probably would have been mkre accurate to say the same pay for less hours. Not everybody is creative, some are happy on an assembly line. So those who need what work provides to the psyche, but aren't build to create "content" will have to share what work there is.

Star Trek socialism arrives at some point on this arc. But not until some energy "miracle" happens. Possibly tasty high nutrition foodstuffs that are VERY cheap, ala "replicators".

We've lived most of our species' existence in a world that REQUIRED long hours of hard work. Now that is changing, but the benefits are currently accreting to the ownership class. And any talk of spreading it around is labeled socialism.

But ignoring this trend threatens dystopia. And another dynamic is that "technologies of control" make the old revolutionary parts of our growth cycles less viable. It used to be that the King often discovered the peasants were revolting long after he could do anything about it. Now, attack helicopters can be dispatched in minutes. And more practically, persuasive radicals can be identified and neutralised more efficiently. We're nowhere near this point yet here in the States, but it's good to bear in mind that we probably couldn't pull off the revolution we accomplished a couple hundred years ago today.

 

[imagep]

Rocket-science for the masses!!! What among your life experiences has equipped you to function as a knowledgeable health care consumer? Is there a single thing? For most folks, there is not.

If we grant the masses the "privilege" of raising children, making major purchases such as cars and houses, and allow them to have checks and credit cards, then certainly we can expect them to make at lead a somewhat informed decision as to their own personal healthcare.

And the actual question of course was whether RATIONING via free-market pricing mechanisms was the appropriate model for the distribution of health care. You didn't answer that question.

As long as we do not have unlimited resources, then yes, rationing is necessary, and rationing healthcare via the free market system is as logical as rationing everything else. Although I am fairly liberal on some issues, I am a huge believer in the free market capitalistic system overall. Now if (or when) resources become unlimited, then maybe you will have a valid point.

But since you did bring up grocery stores, they operate on a basis of high volume at very low profit margins. Is there a lesson for the health care industry to learn there somewhere?

I believe there is a lesson there.

You haven't yet accomplished Step-1 in explaining why a free market health care system should be tolerated to begin with. Complaints that it is being somehow compromised are offered in quite the wrong order.

And you haven't accomplished explaining why the government knows more about my personal healthcare needs than I do.

For so long as they are going to be relied upon to operate, health insurance companies will need to make a reasonable profit from their operations. The insurance function however is an entirely separate matter. The purpose of any insurance scheme is to take what is otherwise expected to be an intermittent, lumpy, and expensive set of costs and turn them into a knowable, smooth and affordable set of costs through the age old process of risk-sharing. Risk, as you might know, is a BAD thing. So is any system that magnifies risk, whether that be free market or not.

I perfectly well understand the function and importance of health insurance. I'm not against health insurance and I have written many post on the merits of a government paid for but privately implemented, health insurance system. I've presented the details of the "imagep national health care plan" on this forum, other forums, and in a one-on-one meeting with my local congressman.

 

[imagep]

Well, that's a lot more than most of these folks who try to preach "Econ 101" could claim!

Maybe if you'd not skipped so many of those money, credit, and banking classes and chapters, you could have eked out at least a B though.

Actually, I read those chapters also, I just didn't always agree with them.

More importantly, I really don't understand why anyone would suggest that should have ruin my straight C college transcript.

 

[imagep]

Paying people more for less work is not the solution.

It's been the solution for the past hundred years or longer, I don't see why it wouldn't be the solution in the future.

The bottom line to all of this is that the reason for work is evolving away from a necessity to provide food, clothing, and shelter through labor. More and more, those things are being created with less and less human labor, and the trend is likely to expand as more and more sophisticated machines are invented to do the hard labor needed to make the things we need to survive. Even the luxury items, like televisions, video games, toys, ATVs, in short, all of the things we like to have but don't really need for survival are becoming available with less and less labor.

Exactly. So as time passes, we will have less and less of a NEED for long working hours to generate the same or better standard of living. Thus, the same pay, or more, for less hours of human labor.

No, the reason to work is evolving away from creating goods and services we need and want, to a necessity to feel as if we're contributing to society. Working is in and of itself a human need, as people tend to destructive and self destructive behavior when they have nothing worthwhile to do.

Sure, I agree with that. Thats EXACTLY the reason that we need a system that allows everyone who desires to work, the opportunity to work.

So, the question becomes: As machines take over more and more of our labor, what do we do to fill the need to work?

In the past we have tended to replace our need to work with our need for leisure. Of course like you have suggested, there are many people who find that work is leisurable (as in the example that I provided about my son). thats certainly not a bad thing. But it is far more important that we provide all families with at least one income source than it is to satisfy just the work-a-holics. Those who choose to work more than is necessary to provide a high standard of living are more than welcome to do charitable (volunteer) work, or to start their own business and work all they choose to, or to use their spare time to be productive in whatever personal manner they choose to - maybe they will choose to learn an additional skill for pleasure or even just to become better at their job, maybe they would choose to spend their time doing home improvement, or maybe they will elect to spend more time with their children or grandchildren.

It would be very impractical if not impossible for us to legislate a maximum amount of "work" that someone can do, but we can certainly disincentivise excess work hours in traditional employment situations. Double time for anything over X hours disincentivises the employer from demanding that workers work over X hours. A more progressive income tax system would be a disincentive to the individual to working excess hours. Paid time off for childrearing is another option, as is mandentory vacation time and holidays.

 

[KevinKohler]

The only thing that needs is our view of self worth, and how we define success in life.