I have watched this discussion this weekend and have purposely stayed out of the fray since these issues seem to generate strong emotion from many.
However, I really think that one must drill down to the cause of the problem or the solution will continue to evade us. And the cause has nothing to do with MONEY, nothing to do with GOVERNMENT and everything to do with automation. It is a delusion to believe America ever had POLICIES (anymore than today) to safeguard or act as a safety net for middle class America. In the past lots of people were needed to produce the things we wanted, so they had some worth. The truth is as people have continued to become less and less important to the production of goods and now even services, measuring what we allocate to them based on their worth (as measured by production) has also decreased. That isn't going to change. In fact, the day will come when machines will be better Doctors and Nurses, better Lawyers and Businessmen, better at almost everything to do with production of goods and services. Sadly, because we have this antiquated concept that money is real and not simply a measure of what can be produced, we allocate less and less of it to average people in society who have nothing special to offer the world and are therefore virtually unneeded and unwanted to the production of goods and services. We have decided that they aren't worth much. I suppose carried to its extreme, the only ones who will be entitled to buy goods in a world capable of producing huge levels of production will be the robots and human beings not being worth much can simply live in squalor. Don't you see the cycle, we produce less because we have decided people aren't worth it and with less produced we need even less people to work. The Swiss have it right, only I would raise it to $5,000 a month. The higher you raise it the better the Earth will be. And by the way just print it, don't tax for it. Inflation only occurs if money chases a limited supply. In a world that is capable of generating an unlimited supply, less money simple means less production. Obviously, this is talking about the extreme but we have no idea right now the limit of production as we are self limiting it artificially by our antiquated concept of economics. Economics is the allocation of scarce resources. It doesn't work if resources are unlimited and we are approaching the day when resources will be unlimited. If we limit allocation to those responsible for producing it (fewer and fewer every year), we will all die of starvation in the Garden of Eden. The only technological thing holding this back right now is Energy, and if this site is correct and LENR will arrive soon, the last barrier to unlimited wealth for all society will be removed. We simply have to understand that we are all worth it. Ransom ----- Original Message ----- From: Sunil Shah To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 3:46 AM Subject: RE: [Vo]:Switzerland considers giving every citizen $2,800 a month American Winter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJJR3lG72AA .s ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 21:23:14 -0700 Subject: Re: [Vo]:Switzerland considers giving every citizen $2,800 a month From: blaze... To: [email protected] Maybe folks should be worrying about extreme poverty (1.25 / day or ~$40 a month) before they worry about 2800 a month. http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2013/ending-extreme-poverty#poverty_scenarios
