On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 5:57 AM Quan Tesla <[email protected]> wrote: > > "Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six > hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full > employment." > > Would this mean that government employees would have to productively work 2 > hours extra per day?
This would only work in a fantasy model of economics where jobs are interchangeable and at no cost. In reality, we have both unemployment and a labor shortage. It costs 1% of lifetime earnings to the employer and employee to change jobs within similar fields, and much longer to learn a new field. So in this fantasy world, we would already be at full employment. Reducing hours by 25% would reduce GDP by 25%, resulting in a 3 year decrease in life expectancy. (Each doubling of income adds 5 years). And we don't WANT full employment. 60% of Americans don't work now, and we are fine with that. Some are too young or too old or busy raising children or disabled or have low IQ or criminal records or are addicted to drugs. Unemployment statistics only count those with job skills who are being paid by the government to not work. What we want are intelligent machines that will make work easier, safer and more productive, raising our incomes while lowering the costs of goods and services. -- -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T50e86f61cc07a7b3-M5165fd55a6af71b9c863cf18 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
