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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

“Lack of demand creates lack of supply.”

Exactly. Americans are spent out. The US savings rate is near a low. Americans are spending 95% of their income, and for the bottom 90%, it's more than that.[1] About 1 in 7 Americans has trouble getting enough food.

What we're discovering is that, when it doesn't take that many people to make all the stuff, the economy winds down to a state where most people are just surviving. This is a new thing. Historically, the big problem was making enough stuff. For millenia, society ran out of labor before it could make enough stuff. We're past that. And we have no idea how to cope with this.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

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Agreed-- most of the assumptions we've been working on are no longer true, and we're not adjusting to these changes very well.

I've been interested lately in some very old economists who, insofar as they remained extremely general, have become more and more prescient. Henry George's writings on the post-scarcity "fools' paradise"[0] are more relevant than ever.

We see this today, as the return to scarce natural resources (such as land) and IP is far outstripping the increases to the return of labor.

[0] http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP15.html#...

If production ends up centralized not through some communist revolution, but merely by advancing technology, do we still end up with an essentially centralized economy? It's hard to even call it an economy, it's more a distribution schedule driven from the bottom by a fear of a bloody uprising.

I don't think production needs to be centralized for this to happen-- it's a variant on Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages/Iron Law of Rent. The theory being that workers tend towards being paid the bare minimum that they'll put up with being alive and procreating.

Now if technology means that it's trivial to give everyone plenty, this may not be "bad," but it wouldn't be exactly egalitarian.

To add on, we spent our savings, then we maxed out adults on debt, and now we've nearly maxed college students. Unless we start being more OK with children carrying large debts, I think we have to come to terms with the fact that our trajectory was always unsustainable, and we've finally found the side opposite where we started.

Your link shows the US savings rate has doubled since 2005. Sure it's lower than 30 years ago, but it's also a lot higher than other countries.

Sounds like we need to start spending globally. Massive infrastructure spending in third world countries to encourage demand for our products.

If that worked then it would be a short term fix that would run out when the third world countries are elevated to the same state.

True but I bet it lasts us until either 1) after my lifetime or 2) we can redirect our efforts to supporting large numbers of people on other worlds or the terraforming necessary to start that process.

Um. No thanks.

Unless you're being sarcastic, the casual way in which this is being proposed makes me very uncomfortable. That is imperialism in all but name. An example of such a phenomena is that South Africa was forced to take on millions of tons of American "waste" poultry. It hurts our economy and makes us policy slaves. The IMF is another institution which has a long history of forcing African countries to act counter to their best interests. We'd like to retain some scraps of our sovereignty.

> An example of such a phenomena is that South Africa was forced to take on millions of tons of American "waste" poultry.

I haven't heard of this. How was it forced to do so? Did the US threaten to bomb South Africa unless South Africa buys its waste poultry?

They way they do everything else. The threat of economic sanctions. Tit-for-tat. Except that the US has the stronger hand

Not at all what I was thinking. I was imagining the US spending money to build highways and electrical infrastructure and water purification plants etc. At that point people can start spending money on luxuries we produce rather than on basic needs we don't.

It's beyond being spent out. People are just off the consumption treadmill. There are substitutes for all the big heavy things people used to need.

Food, clothing, and shelter?

To an extent, yes. It's possible to spend very little on these - of course, shelter will vary by region.

About 1 in 7 Americans has trouble getting enough food.

but the obesity rate is actually higher among lower income earners

As for job destruction, the jury is still out. It is generally accepted by economists that new technologies spawn jobs for all skill levels.

I'd change it to "quality food." Junk food is cheap.

Quality food is more expensive than junk food, but it's still not very expensive. People just don't eat strategically. A gallon of whole milk is 2400 calories well balanced between carbs, fats, and proteins. It costs < $3 and can be purchased at any convenience store, gas station, or grocery store. If you're lactose intolerant, you can achieve the same number of well balanced calories with cheese, nuts and yogurt for only an additional $1 or so.

To say nothing of beans, which are incredibly healthy and absurdly cheap.

If you have time to prepare food, then eating well for very little money is easy. It's harder to find foods which are healthy, cheap, and as easy to prepare as fast food or junk food.

That's why I like milk so much and wish more people consumed it as a staple in their diet: it's cheap and available everywhere. And, if you buy a half gallon (or however much you drink in a day), you don't even need to refrigerate it. Just lug it along with you throughout the day and it'll get better tasting as it gets warmer (room temperature milk is the best, IMO).

It's also why I like cheese, yogurt, and nuts. None of them require any preparation whatsoever.

"It's also why I like cheese, yogurt, and nuts. None of them require any preparation whatsoever."

Don't tell Solyent. That's their marketing plan beaten and it probably tastes better.

Cheap quality food (quality food in general, for that matter) requires preparation, and food prep requires time and energy, and to a lesser extent cooking utensils, spices, etc. that people who don't already cook probably don't have on hand. I often struggle to make myself cook a healthy meal after coming home from a laid back developer job. I can't imagine what it's like after a day at a mind numbing minimum wage job (or multiple such jobs)...

FWIW, some ideas on how to reduce time spent on cooking: 1. Pressure cooking - saves not just time, but also energy. 2. Cooking in bulk, e.g. over the weekend, freeze or refrigerate the contents, and heating in a microwave over the weekdays.

Personally, I think the biggest tragedy for low income people is that many small food stores that accept food stamps do not stock healthy foods well, instead favoring higher margin junk, processed food: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/opinion/see-no-junk-buy-no....

There is also the problem that a lot of healthy food is ridiculously overpriced, catering to the upper middle class population who wants to "eat healthy" and believes some nice "feel good" marketing material instead of careful thought. There still exists very good food that is very cheap, such as the beans mentioned in this discussion. Lentils operate in a similar fashion. It takes effort to identify such things though.

> There is also the problem that a lot of healthy food is ridiculously overpriced, catering to the upper middle class population who wants to "eat healthy" and believes some nice "feel good" marketing material instead of careful thought.

This has more to do with wealthier individuals who live in a bubble where they've convinced themselves that that "healthy" requires buzzwords like organic, non-GMO, free range, etc. If your normal diet consists of frozen chicken tenders and french fries, then switching to cooking your own lean chicken breast and fresh potatoes is a healthy upgrade to your diet, regardless of what buzzwords may or may not be on the packaging.

I agree in general, but there some foods which are exceptions. Identifying these exceptions - I mentioned a few of the important ones - is the key to eating a healthy and inexpensive diet that is also easy to prepare.

I mean, how many people regularly calculate the cost per calorie of the foods they buy? And if you don't do that then you're letting food costs happen to you, rather than effectively controlling your food costs. Hence my comment about most people not eating strategically.

With all due respect:

"a state where most people are just surviving."

It's not new. It's called feudalism. When a powerful elite owns just about everything, a minority of the people serve as specialists at the master's pleasure, and the rest are peasants/serfs (or rogues/thieves).

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