However, if you define poverty in absolute terms, then there is no fundamental reason why we cannot reach 100% non poverty. All that is necessary is for society to produce enough "stuff" that, when divided by the total population, is still greater than the poverty threshold.
In practice, the much harder problem is distributing that stuff such that everyone actually gets enough to put them beyond the poverty threshold. This is certainly a hard problem, but I don't see any reason to think that it is fundamentally unsolvable.
This is indeed how it is defined in many wellfare states eg in Europe.
"People are considered at risk of monetary poverty when their equivalised disposable income (after social transfers) is below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold. This is set at 60 % of the national median equivalised disposable income after social transfers."
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
There will always be poor people with this definition.
For example, in a country with ten people whose incomes are 7, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10, 12, 50, 47212 and 4000000000000000, there is no poverty after that definition (the median would be 10). As you can see, it doesn't even need to be a very egalitarian society!
In this case, median means "sorted by income, at which point have we divided the entire dataset in half". For a dataset with more than 2 elements (so 3 elements minimum), you can construct a dataset for which any below-100% of the median of the dataset is not represented in the dataset.
The easiest example would be using "99% of the median" and [9.999, 10, 11]. Median is 10, 99% of the median is 9.9, the smallest sample is 9.999.
60% of the median income basically means "the lowest 50% income bracket should not have more than 40% deviation". Or rather; the lowest possible income is bigger than 60% of the lowest earner of the top 50% of society.
As those jobs are automated, who will patronize those businesses? eg what fraction of McDonalds customers are high-income high-skill laborers vs lower-wage low-skill?
The companies will evolve or die as they always have if their customer base disappears.
Human cognitive abilities follow a normal distribution. Some low-skilled laborers never had an opportunity to reach their potential, others lack the capacity to perform higher skill jobs... and some people are incapable of even "low-skill" labor.
Is automation maintaining or reducing the number of jobs for less capable people? Are we slowly raising the unemployable-threshold?
Good thing it is not true at all, and has been debunked and ridiculed by economists over a century ago.
The Malthusian argument is a thermodynamic argument. If we grow without bound (either by number or per capita consumption) we will run out of resources like any other biological system.
The only thing that allows us to escape this is human's unique ability to transcend our biological nature - i.e. breed responsibly (Gd I hate that) and consume less.
Mainstream economics is enamored with boundless growth, therefore, we're on a crash course.
Human behavior is not thermodynamics. To the very least, the day were all the resources in the universe have been consumed by its living beings is so far away that it is absolutely irrelevant and inapplicable to our society.
Malthusian economics are garbage.
"Right, because food today is more expensive than food yesterday" Love the sarcasm, not the shallow argument (I appreciate that food is, seemingly, cheaper than yesterday).
Human behavior is not thermodynamics. Agriculture is. Food is cheaper today because:
1) N2 fixation thanks to Dr. Haber 2) Large scale potash mining and shipping. 3) Unsustainable use of other necessary agricultural inputs
Point 1) is fairly stable in the medium term (i.e. my daughter's potential children's life span ~ next 100 years to 400 years) because energy is cheap and effectively getting cheaper. Population won't grow too fast as to run out of energy, if it did we're really f.ed, and global energy use has stabilized and might decline.
Point 2), however, is a nasty one. Run out of potash, then you run out of K and therefore food production above carrying capacity. You can turn to (say) oceans to mine K, but that's expensive.
I appreciate the econ argument that "you can't run out of resources because the price goes up until you don't want to use them" but that ultimately trash. You won't go hungry, because you might afford a doubling in price of your groceries. It's the Ethiopian kids whose lives balance everything out.
Point 3) Acquirers are running out so, for example, California's agricultural production is in peril.
See... thermo!
Are there alternatives that are more "sustainable"? Sure. But they all come with (an unknown to me) maximum carrying capacity.
As to human behavior not being modeled by thermo... that's irrelevant. People will shift preferences to eat lower quality, higher yield crops due to prices changes and all.
Of course those prices changes are (partly) due to... thermodynamics!
Look at Walmart, they aren't raising wages out of the goodness of their hearts, they need to raise wages to keep good employees. (and probably a little PR and politics too)
Why can’t minimum wage be raised to provide a better standard of living?
That’s why in some other countries, instead of a minimum wage, which is the government forcing businesses to pay a certain wage, the government itself makes up the difference between the actual wage and a desired wage. So if the government decides that everyone should earn at least $15/h but the market price for flipping burgers is only $10/h, the government itself will provide the additional $5/h. This effectively raises the standard of living without pressuring businesses and also without the adverse effects like pushing up prices or creating more unemployment.
Your explanation of what's going on at the micro level contradicts my experience as a business owner who's been signing paychecks for many years. All businesses have inefficiencies, and in general the larger the check, the more scrutiny the expense will receive. Internally this manifests as having higher expectations for a higher paid employee, and prioritizing automation, offshoring, or other business decisions when labor costs get too high. Externally, when we expand our relationship with a client, we fully expect that it will receive more scrutiny from various stakeholders at the company simply because the check getting written to us is bigger, even if we deliver proportionately more value.
Keeping minimum wage low is $153B/year "corporate welfare" check.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/1...
No, it also means those people are paid a liveable wage, as opposed to a pittance.
The lowest minimum wage I remember hearing about as a kid was $1.50/hr. I thought that sounded like a lot of money at the time, but I probably was not even 10 years old.
That would have been in the first half of the 1970's when the federal poverty line was around $2,500. So working full time, you'd make $3,000 or about 120% of the poverty level.
Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and the poverty level (2016) is $12,200. So still, a full-time minimum wage worker earns nearly 120% of the poverty level.
Source: Table 1, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p....
But jobs are just means to an end for most people. Why can't government aim to simply provide those ends?
The obvious counterargument is that the free market is more efficient. But the US government has shown itself to be very capable in providing some services to the entire country. The military has done a great job keep the country safe. There just doesn't seem to be the willpower to create the navy/army/airforce of food, shelter, healthcare and education.
I guess the issue is that it's hard to get elected if you promise to make things better 20 years from now.
I think you could interpret the US military's success despite "waste" to mean that a federal government can get away with a lot of inefficiency and still beat the "free market."
History already showed us what private military is like. I believe it's essentially feudalism and warlords. I.e. true poverty for 90% of the population. A powerful federal millitary that follows the laws of democratically elected officials gives people in the US historically unprecedented safety.
It's not clear to me why the federal government couldn't build a military-like organizations for addressing food, shelter, health care, and education.
The fundamental issue seems to be that the free market is the best means for deciding resource allocation towards those other goals. So why not simply implement UBI pegged to prices in LCOL areas?
There is a better answer - keep the minimum wage where it is until it becomes meaningless because of inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit and make it easier for employers to pass it on to workers each month. They already take out taxes, it shouldn't be hard to do the opposite.
The EITC has historically been supported by both Republican and Democratic presidents.