(12-18-2018, 03:25 PM)David Horn Wrote: I agree that a total collapse would be the best possible motivation for real change, but think about the cost? We need a return to a non-elite focus, but I'm not sure we can afford that path, even with much higher taxes. In any case, I doubt that business will refocus on hiring human beings in large numbers, and even less certain the business community will feel the need to pay higher wages. Automaton is just too enticing. The 1930's solution may be out of reach this time.I am not sure I buy the idea that automation will eliminate the need for humans to work. Take health care, elder care and child care. Are people going to want to be handled by a machine, or will they want a human touch? We talk about the "rising price of health care" like its some sort of crisis. Once upon a time 90% of us were farmers. Suppose the future will bring a time when 90% of us take care of other people. Why can't that work?
Something that may very well be within reach is a sovereign wealth fund (SWF), funded by high corporate taxes and high taxes on top marginal wealth (using the 1930-50's approach). It will take a while for the fund to be meaningful, but having a commanding share of corporate shares controlled by some quasi-government entity might have a better shot at fixing what's broken inside the private sector than any direct action, and it could provide a steady stream of dividends to fund social programs. Eventually, the taxes could be lowered, but the SWF would still exist to guarantee social funding.
To be honest, it's hard to know how a society that has little need for labor will operate, but there's decades to work through that. AGW is a lot more urgent. So is our crumbling infrastructure, which may be paired with the AGW response. For instance, we're not getting high speed rail any time soon, but electric airplanes are only a decade away.
It might if we see "the economy" as an aspect of our culture (and hence a thing made by US) and not as an externality (something imposed on us by Nature)
What we need is an economy with a persistent labor shortage. This can be done using something like the program I outlined, AND creating a leading sector out of health care. (I wrote about this is my 2004 political cycles book). The way you do this is to create a two-tier health care market. A national health care administration would provide insurance that covers *standard* healthcare at affordable prices. The national system would cover everyone, but not everything. Only drugs in the National Formulary would be covered. Only procedures in National List would be covered. Initially, drugs and procedures considered as gold standard would be included as well as less expensive alternatives. New drugs and treats would be added to the covered lists after documented evidence of cost-effectiveness was produced.
Outside of the public system there would be a private, market-based health care system that offered treatments not covered by the public system. Experimental therapies would be available here first. Such treatments would be very expensive, and so only accessible by the very rich. Since the very rich are a small group and those that have a particular ailment would be a tiny group. Despite the huge profit margin treating this tiny group would provide, its small size would mean a small amount of total profit. Thus, providers would work to find cost savings so they can charge less and get more customers. The example of this today is cosmetic surgery. It is much cheaper than insurance-covered procedures when you consider the total cost (what the insurance company pays plus what you pay).
So costs of new treatments would come down and the number who can afford treatment would rise. At some point enough data will be gather to make an appeal to add it to the list of covered treatments. When this happens the profit margin would contract again. but the increase volume would make it work while.
The idea here is to make health car work like a normal leading sector like cars. As the number of cars rise, households paid more and more for personal transportation, an item that used to be free (i.e. walking to work). However the growth in the number of cars, and service garages, and auto insurance, and auto finance, etc. creates huge numbers of new jobs and the income that paid for the higher transportation costs. Overall, despite spending huge sums on transportation that we did not pay in 1900, we were better off. And the same could happen with health care.
What people do not see is *how* the economy grows. Consider lawyers. They are no more productive that they were in John Adam's day. Yet they make way more in real dollars today than John ever did. Why? The reason is the people who create the material necessities of life are WAY MORE productive than they used to be. For example, farmers today are like 80 times more productive than they were in John's day. As they became more productive fewer farmers were needed, so their incomes did not rise with their productivity. Rather, many who used to farm became manufacturers or went into human service jobs like John had, but in fields like teaching. The rise of public education at the grade school level, and then the high school level and then college all expanded the numbers involved in instruction over the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. Like John, none of these service-providers have become more productive, yet their real wages rose over time anyway.
By the 1930's the balance had shifted from most workers having productive jobs like farming or manufacturing, to service jobs like John: teachers, managers, hair stylists, artists, and, especially, health care workers. Rising wages come from the increased productivity of material-producing elements. These could become entirely machines and it can continue to produce rising wages in service-providers like John, even as 99% percent of us become service providers like John. It's just a function of culture.