Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
When everyone is equal then the need to work hard is removed, eventually the system fails.
When everyone is equal then the opportunity to work hard is created, and the system succeeds. Likewise, when people are unequal, the system fails. Would you say that our economy has boomed, now that we have ballooning income inequality? Whatever inequality is supposed to beneficially do for us, it's doing it now. How would you say that's working out?
At least we haven't sunk as low as some countries. They started counting illegal drug purchases and prostitution in their GDP calculations.
Counting illegal activities boosted Italy's GDP by a full percent.
There's no reason Italy SHOULDN'T be counting those things. Legality has no bearing on whether or not the activity generates revenue.
Being a porn star or a private escort contributes to GDP. Being a prostitute does not. The activity isn't significantly different, but we ignore one of them arbitrarily.
Profits from growing and selling marijuana don't count towards GDP...unless you happen to cross state lines into Colorado where it's perfectly fine.
Whether or not an activity makes you uncomfortable should have no bearing on GDP, only its actual utility.
Billionaires do not work, yet they are rich. The simple solution is to make it easy for new innovators to enter profitable closed fields like finance, medicine etc. A new and open stock trading system where people can participate directly, the ending of central banking and the encouragement of peer to peer lending will allow the average person to get unearned income just like the elites. It is true that simple minded low IQ breeders need work to keep them busy but many of us do not need a job to be productive and innovative. I believe that technology improves more when people have more free time and are not forced to work dead end jobs to pay BIg Brother.
Billionaires don't work? Unearned income? What color is the sky in your world?
I mean, hey, I'm no billionaire. But I've been around enough wealthy people to know that they do indeed work, and typically work longer days than some guy operating a forklift or flipping burgers.
Actually, he keeps talking about GDP per capita. It hasn't grown at 3% for the last 150 years. More in the 1.5-2% area.
You are correct! Very sorry, I should not rely on a faulty memory.
"The red line drawn through this is a straight line, indicating a steady rate of growth of per capita GDP over this 141 year period (at a rate of 1.9% per year, or 1.869% per year to be more precise). This is remarkable. REMARKABLE! There are significant year to year variations, and sometimes decade long variations (such as in the 1930s during the Great Depression, and the spike during World War II). But eventually, even after the shocks of the Great Depression and of World War II, the economy has always returned to the same path it had been on before, not to a different one."
Nothing new. 2/3rds of the workforce used to work in the primary sector. Now that's around 2%.
They were not rendered unemployable. They simply shifted to new industries where humans were necessary.
That is the big difference that we will be facing. Currently human provided services will be provided so efficiently by robots and automation, that most humans will lose any competitive advantage that would allow them to earn a decent wage.
When everyone is equal then the opportunity to work hard is created, and the system succeeds. Likewise, when people are unequal, the system fails. Would you say that our economy has boomed, now that we have ballooning income inequality? Whatever inequality is supposed to beneficially do for us, it's doing it now. How would you say that's working out?
Anytime the reward is the same for everyone the system slows down.
Take an increase.
A company offers an employee increase based on a point system. For those that produce the most they get the most increase or raise. So lets say someone does less then they get less of an increase. Some would not get any kind of increase because they did poorly.
That is the system that I worked under for almost 10 years. Top producers get the top pay raise.
Things changed and we went to an across the board pay raise. Everyone gets the same increase. It does not matter if you are the best and brightest employee or the person that is a slacker. Over time what has happened is that top performing employees realized that they could slow down. Would not matter because they would get the same increase as everyone else. Slacker employees did not see a need to increase productivity because they would still get the same increase as everyone else. One of my guys was bringing this up to me. He was pointing to a guy that had done his best to not have to work and still ended up with a raise anyway.
Originally we were getting anywhere from 6% on down. As the economy slowed down the increases dropped down to 2%. The only way to get a great increase is to move up within the organization. The company started looking at the bottom line and realized with production down they could not sustain the higher increases in pay. Some people decided to leave, and can you guess which employees walked? Many of the high performing employees. In 18 years of working here we had not fired anyone. We recently fired an employee that thought he would never get fired.
Another example of this is with grades. I recently read a story online about a college instructor that failed an entire class. Students were bringing up the fairness in pay that certain candidates were talking about. Take Socialism. Everyone should be equal. The instructor decided to do an experiment.
A test was given in the class. At the end of the test they took all the grades and added up the GPA, deviding by the number of students in the class. Those that had earned an A were given a B, and those that had earned a C were given a B. Everyone earned a B. Those that would have earned a D were very happy and those that had earned a C were happy as well. Those that had earned an A were a little upset.
The next week another test was given. This time the A students put less effort into studying. The D students realized that they would not have to study and did not study. The B and C students put even less effort into hitting the books. Everyone earned a C.
The next week the A students failed to study, the D students failed to study and the B and C students put less effort into the class. The grade declined to a D.
The last week of the experiment no one studied and everyone failed the test.
By making everyone equal the need to do anything to improve was eliminated and all parties failed to do anything.
In life you have to offer a way to the top. It has to be with some risk. It has to take a lot of work to get there. With out the rewards no one will take on the risk and do anything to get to where they want to be. Rewards are based on the amount of effort that someone puts into the work. When you take that away and offer everyone the same reward you end the game and the system fails.
Without jobs, it might be fairly equitable to give a flat 'living fee' to everyone. Enough to cover basic living. Of course, all this will do is shift the money to the 1% who have the robots producing things that put everyone out of work in the first place.
Socially encourage creativity, too, to keep folks busy and the creative folks can earn more money with their work, you'd think. Which means, the 'living fee' given to everyone should have a little bit of extra in it for optional expenses.
I don't think we need to worry about finding the limits of human creativity, pretty soon we will have A.I. to figure things out. Hopefully they will find some sort of value in humans.
Another example of this is with grades. I recently read a story online about a college instructor that failed an entire class. Students were bringing up the fairness in pay that certain candidates were talking about. Take Socialism. Everyone should be equal. The instructor decided to do an experiment.
A test was given in the class. At the end of the test they took all the grades and added up the GPA, deviding by the number of students in the class. Those that had earned an A were given a B, and those that had earned a C were given a B. Everyone earned a B. Those that would have earned a D were very happy and those that had earned a C were happy as well. Those that had earned an A were a little upset.
The next week another test was given. This time the A students put less effort into studying. The D students realized that they would not have to study and did not study. The B and C students put even less effort into hitting the books. Everyone earned a C.
The next week the A students failed to study, the D students failed to study and the B and C students put less effort into the class. The grade declined to a D.
The last week of the experiment no one studied and everyone failed the test.
By making everyone equal the need to do anything to improve was eliminated and all parties failed to do anything.
In life you have to offer a way to the top. It has to be with some risk. It has to take a lot of work to get there. With out the rewards no one will take on the risk and do anything to get to where they want to be. Rewards are based on the amount of effort that someone puts into the work. When you take that away and offer everyone the same reward you end the game and the system fails.
In the real world, one student shows up on the first day with a 347.2 GPA that he inherited from his parents, and he makes all the rules for the class, such as that classmates must pay him GPA points to partake in his monopoly on pencils and calculators.
Even the alternative to egalitarianism implied by your example, that hard workers get As and slackers get Ds or Fs, is far more egalitarian than the real world by virtue of capping the GPA a student can earn and providing some measure of equal opportunity (or at least, I assume you think all the students should have access to the same textbooks).
Billionaires do not work, yet they are rich. The simple solution is to make it easy for new innovators to enter profitable closed fields like finance, medicine etc. A new and open stock trading system where people can participate directly, the ending of central banking and the encouragement of peer to peer lending will allow the average person to get unearned income just like the elites. It is true that simple minded low IQ breeders need work to keep them busy but many of us do not need a job to be productive and innovative. I believe that technology improves more when people have more free time and are not forced to work dead end jobs to pay BIg Brother.
I agree. Additionally, people are most creative when in need. Example: an interior decorator friend had a client who had done some remodeling but couldn't come up with enough money to carpet the addition at the time. The homeowner took it upon herself to paint a pattern onto the floor & incorporated a couple of throw rugs. The client was gifted artistically & the project turned out great. Some have become entrepreneurs because of a need.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
