every time i hear that i'm surprised what a fairy tale! Of course politicians forced to say comfortable "we need more spending" than the suicidal "we need more working", yet it is obvious for any sane normal person what only increased productivity and efficiency can get us out of this small hole-in-the-road current recession and the really big crises looming tomorrow - healthcare, energy, education - and the day after tomorrow - social security. Look at who's leading the recovery - the companies reporting large profits without much increased sales, if any. I.e. increased productivity and efficiency, less waste. The waste in the business is still extremely large, yet much smaller than compare to heydays of 2005-7. Instead of being wasted, at least some part of these profits would get invested and thus would spread around in the economy and help overall recovery.
What you want is more demand. (Which depletes natural resources.)
If you want, you can have "well off poor". That's someone who is poorer than his neighbors, but due to efficiency still has everything necessary for a comfortable life. Due to human nature people don't really like this.
it means less of mundane and low productive, time wasting jobs. More value produced by less people. That increased amount of value allows for more investment (and spending as well) which creates more jobs.
Following your logic, the 20000 years ago was the golden era of employment - everybody was employed full-time gathering edible roots and hunting.
>If you want, you can have "well off poor". That's someone who is poorer than his neighbors,
Due to some unfortunate law of the Universe there is always a half which, by whatever criteria you choose, is worse off than the other half.
Unfortunately not everyone can do less mundane jobs, especially when the skills needed change within a generation - there isn't even time to go to school to learn them.
> More value produced by less people. That increased amount of value allows for more investment (and spending as well) which creates more jobs.
Maybe. But only if the investment creates more demand. It doesn't always.
> Following your logic, the 20000 years ago was the golden era of employment
Certainly. But who said employment was the only goal? It's _a_ goal, but not the only one.
> is worse off than the other half.
Yup, which is why people don't like it. But your plan (of higher productivity) won't fix that.