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Comment by nonotreally6 | Hacker News Reader

You mean the Fed printed a ton of money and sent it to everyone making less than a certain amount, and the government guaranteed wages for those who no longer wish to work, and caused a labor shortage and inflation.

Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation, if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society by working are eroded and redistributed to those who don't wish to work.

If it keeps up, soon we'll all be poor, nobody will earn a living wage, but at least it will be equitable!

Don't forget that printing money for stimulus checks is borrowing at greatest expense to the lowest wage earners in order to pay those who choose not to work at all

It's not some revealed flaw in capitalism that given short term wages that are the same for working and for doing nothing, that people choose the latter.

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> for those who no longer wish to work

> to those who don't wish to work

> those who choose not to work at all

> the same for working and for doing nothing, that people choose the latter

You're making my point for me with the arbeit macht frei dog-whistles here. So let me be clear: if "work" is defined as "millions of white and blue collar professional lives before Covid, lives replete with Kafka-esque meaninglessness in the former group and actual, medieval misery in the latter", then what I am saying is:

1. Yes guy, exactly: people no longer wish to "work", by that definition.

2. This is a good and deeply hopeful thing.

A society that's serious about human flourishing will grapple with these questions on a deeper level than "what's the unemployment rate?" or "should Amazon be lauded for 'creating jobs?'" Covid has forced us to grapple with them.

The usual Cato Institute talking points all involve pointing at the poor and moralizing about how they don't want to work, but comments like yours hold less and less water as time passes, largely because of shit like Covid. The notion - your notion - that there's an enormous class of people out there who are nothing but shiftless layabouts who fundamentally want to leech off of the rest of us is a strawman. While I'm sure there's a parasite or two out there, human beings of every class find deep meaning in labor. But the labor has to be meaningful!! Or, at least, not soul-crushing or immiserating. (And let's not even get into the really fun side-claim I'd make that there are proportionally way more parasites at the top of the socioeconomic pile than the bottom.)

So: to the extent that anyone doesn't want to work, they don't want to work because the labor available to them is innovatively life-ruining and in most cases vastly underpaid. To want to work in such conditions when there are suddenly alternative choices, as you imply they should, is to be deeply ill. Actually insane. And more of a reflection of where your heart is than anything else.

I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this comment. Thank you for absolutely crystalizing so many of the thoughts and feelings that have been floating around in my head over the past 15 months.

Cheers but no need -- I'm just repeating what other smarter people have told me. Take whatever you got from my comment and put it to good use: pass it along to someone else, or just go out into your community and lend a hand to those in need. Good luck

> those who no longer wish to work

This reminded me of an old political cartoon I saw at the Abraham Lincoln museum: https://www.loc.gov/resource/pga.04994/

It shows Lincoln with his (supposed) supporters and their requests, one of whom is depicted as saying, "I want a hotel established by government, where people that ain't inclined to work can board free of expense, and be found in rum and tobacco."

You might enjoy my digital catalog of the Library of Congress: www.locserendipity.com

Very very well said. This needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Along with a line from a reply below: 'There’s no “labour” shortage. There’s a “wage” shortage.'

I usually read "People don't want to work!" statements as a sentence fragment. It's the first half of a whole statement. The second half of the statement is a variation on: "for the shitty wages or conditions I'm offering and will rescind at a moment's notice for any made up reason I can imagine".

The idea I get from the Cato echoing types is if you have a job you should beg and scrape and genuflect for your betters to thank them for their grace in employing you.

I think this meme accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis. Companies contracted but demanded more work from their remaining employees. Feeling fortunate to be employed they increased individual output to cover for the reduced head count. Companies screwed over employees then shrugged their shoulders with the "it's the economy" refrain.

Yes this is exactly right. There's a logical endpoint to their worldview: feudalism. It's got everything they want: the jobs (100% employment!), the genuflecting, the huge profits.

Yes, some are calling it "techno-feudalism".

I think I first heard it from Yanis Varoufakis (https://youtu.be/YpOLHSzZ8jc). Watched as many interviews of him as I could find during those long days at the beginning and middle of the pandemic. He's an exceedingly sane person.

Yeah I wasn't gonna make a whole big thing about it, but I didn't pull that out of a hat. I know Varoufakis, but I hadn't heard him talk about techno-feudalism. In fact I'd heard the phrase "neo-feudalism" from people like Jodi Dean and Joel Kotkin, who have good stuff on this (though who's to say - I'm neither an economist nor a historian). I'll try to find YV's stuff and read it, I love him and I'm sure it's well thought out.

Thank you for articulating what I often have a lot of trouble figuring out how to say.

Work, in general, is stupid. The entire concept of it is inane. My fantasy version of utopia is a peaceful, post-scarcity society where no one ever needs to work, and automatically gets a life of luxury simply because it's available and costs nothing. Many people will choose to fill their time with things that look a bit like what we now call work (if you tilt your head and squint just the right way). Many will devote their lives to the pursuit of furthering humankind's knowledge. Many will choose creative endeavors that in today's economy would be judged worthless. Many will focus on their families and enjoy their time with them. And yes, some will choose to sit around and do nothing all day but eat junk food and watch the utopian equivalent of TV all day.

And all that is not only ok, it's awesome! Obviously this is a fantasy world, and we can't live in it. But we should think more about that as a goal, and shape things as best we can. Let's stop creating bullshit jobs just for the sake of full employment, and figure out what really needs to be done, and what doesn't. There's so much wealth in the world that we could certainly find an alternative that could keep people housed, clothed, fed, and then some, if there isn't a job available for them.

Our current system is just based on personal greed and cynicism. If we don't evolve beyond it, I fear we won't last as a civilization (or possibly even as a species) for many more centuries.

The liberation from material bondage is a goal for most of the world religions. Where does it begin? When people quit being vain. Therein lies the rub.

> My fantasy version of utopia is a peaceful, post-scarcity society where no one ever needs to work, and automatically gets a life of luxury simply because it's available and costs nothing.

Contrast with... "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." -- George Orwell.

Sadly, I think we're still closer to Mr Orwell's vision at this point in time, in spite of have more material comforts and resources available than at any point in history.

To get to your utopian vision, we'll need to permanently break free of our primate instincts. That's not going to be easy.

I think you're focusing on the wrong things (for instance, no one called anyone a leech). The fact is, we don't live in a post-scarcity society yet. Until we do work can't be about meaning, it has to be about need. Look around your house and life. Count the number of things you own and services you use that are not fun to make or maintain. Until that number hits 0, the majority of society will need to be forced to do jobs they don't want to in order to survive.

Things can definitely be more equitable than they are now, and should be if we truly want a meritocracy, but let's not get caught up in the delusion that society can exist without people doing shit jobs they don't like.

Meaning, in my view, is not a switch; it's a dial. We can have some more than we have now.

Overall I agree with you: I'm not naive, nor am I a utopianist. I'm fine with more equitable. But we're so entrenched in the status quo that it feels like you have to talk like a revolutionary to get even a shred of "a little more equitable".

Edit: wait though what's a "post-scarcity" economy, anyway, concretely? I've heard since I can remember that we grow enough food as a species to feed everyone (and yet we throw tons of food out) - is that not a decent marker of being post-scarcity? We seem to have enough wealth in the US to be in neverending proxy or non-proxy aggressive wars against various groups of poor and largely non-white people - that wealth, used slightly differently, has got to be some kind of dent in all sorts of scarcity, no? I'm not writing this to attack you whatsoever; I'm genuinely curious. Post-scarcity is a phrase I've heard smarter people than me utter every now and then, and it only just occurred to me that I've never actually figured out what it meant. (I'll Google it now of course but I'd love to hear your perspective all the same. Cheers.)

Post-scarcity just refers to a time after scarcity, which is defined as limited resources. In a world that is post-scarcity, everyone can have everything they want (materially) without infringing on anyone else's ability to have the same.

The reason it gets brought up is because the moment one person's needs or wants infringe on another's, there needs to be a way to decide who gets what. Generally, this is what people are talking about when they talk about various economic systems. You come up with different mechanics that use the distribution of goods to incentivize the production of more goods.

The only way we escape the economic games that need to be played, to keep people working and producing things society needs, is if we no longer need them to produce anything. Then you no longer need the incentives and feedback loops that tie consumption to production, and people are generally free to do whatever the hell they want.

By definition, this is impossible to achieve. Assume that some person says I want what everyone else has. There is no post scarcity. It is better to think of it as meeting a set of pre-defined needs. These needs can change over time. for e.g., internet access. But framing it as wanting everything I could possibly imagine is a straw-man.

How is it a straw-man? Impossible or not, it means what it means.

Yeah, I've always maintained that there are too many people with unbounded greed for a "complete" post-scarcity to be achievable. There's a "greed is good" crowd, and then beyond that, there are those who aren't even concerned with whether it's good to be greedy, they just want to win at others' expense, spitefully. A world where they can't take from other people is not desirable. The first time I got to know someone with this attitude, I started out thinking it was a front, or a joke, but it wasn't.

The idea of post-scarcity brushes over that dark part of human nature, and assumes we can figure out how to cooperate, even absent antisocial misanthropes. In Star Trek, they have "figured it out", but the transition to post-scarcity is understandably only vaguely described.

I couldn't agree more. The idea itself is grand, but it's not adaptable to chaos. So long as human personalities are scattered around a bell curve, the more competitive and materialistic of us (which includes those of us who want humanity to pursue scientific development since it is extremely capital intensive) will force the competition to continue.

Post-scarcity is often talked about in binary terms. We've either reached post-scarcity or we haven't.

I believe the transition to post-scarcity will be gradual, that it will happen faster in some sectors of society than others, and that this process may take multiple generations to complete. This has been the case with every other major economic shift, why would it not be the case with post-scarcity?

If this is how the transition to post-scarcity occurs, societies will eventually hit a point at which many people still need to work to produce our economic output, but far fewer than currently do. How will our economic system handle that situation? The selling of labor is the primary mechanism by which we distribute resources, but if we get to a point where only 20% of the adult population are needed in the labor force then how do we distribute resources to the remaining 80%?

Now, where things get really interesting is that "needed in the labor force" is not a binary thing, either. What if there's a big slice of the population from whom we only need five hours of labor a week? And they coexist alongside another slice of the population from whom we need forty hours of labor a week?

Maybe we're already a few steps down this road.

We are indeed already a little ways down that road, and the answer we've come to is: Everyone still has to work.

Most jobs that people have now aren't strictly necessary. If everyone gave up their leisure time to do all of their own cooking and cleaning, a massive set of jobs would disappear overnight. If we all at local, another. And the list goes on. Effectively, what happens is, we invent new jobs that are based on want as opposed to need. It's easy to look at that picture and say 'there is so much unnecessary work that happens!' but really, that X% of the economy based on want is required for price discovery of the rest. That is what your last paragraph is touching on, how do we decide who does what and how much? In capitalism, the answer is price discovery, and for that to work, everyone has to participate in the market.

> In capitalism, the answer is price discovery, and for that to work, everyone has to participate in the market.

This is precisely what I'm getting at. We've built a system on the assumption of a forty-hour full-time work week, with a goal of minimizing unemployment and (recently) maximizing labor market participation. We did this because we need participation in the market for effective resource distribution.

What happens when our economy simply does not need that much labor to produce all the economic output we want? Do we force people to continue participating in the labor market in makework jobs just so that they can have access to resources? To what extent are we already doing this?

If we're to have a true market then we need to eliminate a bunch of market distortions, in particular the 30-hour threshold where a job is considered full-time and the 5-hour binary cutoff for unemployment, so that people who want to work somewhere between 5 and 30 hours a week (which I suspect is actually most people) can actually express that preference by offering a price for that much labour.

> We are indeed already a little ways down that road, and the answer we've come to is: Everyone still has to work.

But logically it would seem that should be: Everyone still has to work, but a little less than hitherto.

Now the question becomes, how much less?

There’s no “labour” shortage. There’s a “wage” shortage.

Companies aren’t really complaining about a labour shortage. They’re complaining that no one wants to work for their ridiculously low pay while the board and CEOs sail around in their yachts.

Yeah it really is hilarious in a way, because you can take many business owners' constant blathering about the so-called free market and throw it right back in their faces:

"No one wants to work for poverty wages in my shitty restaurant!" Sucks bro, that's the market. Raise your wages.

"If I raise my wages I can't stay in business!" Sucks bro, that's the market. Make your restaurant less shitty and get more business. Innovate. This is just competition - we like a little competition in America. You're not against America, are you?

They're just as reactive / emotional as the liberals they decry for being emotional. I know that schadenfreude isn't a workable foundation for a political outlook, but watching these people become ever so slightly uncomfortable about their position in the world before we inevitably return to pre-Covid status quo ante is worth a good chuckle.

You're in for a rudest of all awakenings. You cannot demand salary to be raised without understanding business will be looking elsewhere to fulfill business needs , and will be outsourcing actual labor. Business that can't be outsourced in such conditions (restaurants, hospitality) will be forced to shut down when outsourceable business lays out local workers and replaces them with someone half a world away.

Nah. People tried that already with bad results. Not to mention, what happens when the foreigners you are exploiting start demanding the same things the locals are?

Not only that, but the social and political ramifications of having not only blue collar workers out of a job, but also the PMC class as well. You want a revolution? Cause that is how you get one.

In a truly free market this would happen naturally and slowly equalize the wages in America and elsewhere. Given that the US government exists though it can artificially limit this process and require visas and work permits or else tax businesses that flee offshore.

Outsourcing has costs on it's own but it makes sense for America to artificially inflate those costs to maintain its consumer market. America eats the world and through doing so provides a lot of liquidity to the international market. Whether that is just or whether it should specifically be America is up for debate - but it does have the power for force others to play by its rules within certain limits.

Bare naked capitalism isn't so far off from an anarchic free-for-all with spiked clubs.

The businesses who won't figure out how to raise wages will go out of business and be replaced by new companies who figured out how to have their employees work more efficiently.

It sounds like maybelsyrup has it right, and it's these business owners who are in for the rude awakening. There's a rootbeer stand near me that has a message on their menu saying, "if minimum wage is raised to $15, our prices will go up 10%." They charge $3.60 for a pretty good cheese burger. When I read that message, I sit there thinking that the owner is an idiot. At $4.00, the burger is still a better deal than McDonalds and $15/hr is a solid wage in this area.

> There's a rootbeer stand near me

Yes! I keep seeing stuff like this, and I think "wait a minute, you're telling me that you want to slightly raise the price of this great product or service, and in exchange, your employees will be paid a living wage, or get decent health insurance, or another half day off, or a vacation? Please take my fucking money."

Ahhh, something tells me, you're not their core customer.

A long time ago I worked for a small family business. They built their business from the ground up, the old man started it in his garage based off of his industry connections from the 70s before being crushed by more effective outfits in the area. When he got too old he retired and handed the new outfit it to his two sons.

I recall being in an all hands bi-weekly meeting on one Saturday, one of the sons stood up and addressed the entire small company:

"I called around and you know what, we pay about average for the industry. Maybe a little bit on the upper side of average. You know, I could raise my prices and maybe pay you all more, but then I would have less customers. and If I have less customers then I can't afford to pay as many of you."

He looked around with an expression that I felt like was almost contempt, but really wasn't The industry is pretty low margin and they got theirs to be very good with volume sales and very good efficiency in processes. He felt the pressure to execute their plans to expand into another, second facility while remaining profitable enough at the original to fund their plans for world domination.

Every day they had customers waiting in line for literally hours for their turn in a crappy, kind of gross facility that had been cobbled together by these DIYers over a number of years. Every day they turned away customers in droves.

I thought to myself: Old man, if you don't raise your prices, you are a priceless fool. If you can't hire enough people to handle your amazing, envy inducing volume, _and_ you have the gall to exclaim proudly that you pay a little bit better than average, then you are surely and rightfully doomed to this mediocrity until you hopefully die.

What he said next only confirmed my young ideations: "We only want the people who _want_ to work here, to work here. If you don't like working here, well you should go somewhere else."

Nowadays they are still in business. They had indeed increased their pay by over 40% in the next couple of years. They opened their second facility years later after more years of project extensions and overruns, just in time for a global pandemic to shutter their entire operation for months. I'm happy they saw the light and realized what you have to do to attract and keep quality skilled employees, but I am for more pleased to be their competitor.

That's not a rude awakening. As long as one's invested in change, that's a speed bump. Businesses can't outsource if outsourcing is severely curtailed by policy or law. Leaders, legislators, policymakers -- they have knobs and dials to turn on this thing. Indeed, leaders fiddling with knobs is what got us here in the first place. In South Korea in the 2nd half of the 20th century, not long ago, capital flight was severely restricted -- punishable by death in some cases! I'm not close to saying we do that here; I'm just saying we have tools.

Like some other commenters, and many thousands more in the broader discourse, you're speaking from a position of "this is the way things are and they can't be changed, so there".

My main point isn't to argue for this or that particular policy. My main point is that the world can be different. People motivated to change it will find a way to do so. In matters like these, arguments for economic determinism are borderline defeatist.

So much for the better.

We shouldn't subsidize unlivable business models with human misery.

If that (the closures) also result in misery (of the unemployment kind) that will also be a good thing. It will signal stongly that we depend on broken business models and need to update them.

What you want is a compromise that perpetuates substinence-level wages and working class people needing 2 jobs, for the benefit of keeping alive zombie businesses.

> You cannot demand salary to be raised without understanding business will be looking elsewhere to fulfill business needs , and will be outsourcing actual labor.

Sure, but this has been happening for all of history, and the end result has been higher wages and lifting people out of poverty. We still have a long way to go, though, both locally and globally.

I just started watching Warrior, which is a TV series set in San Francisco in the 1870s. The Irish-Americans are pissed off that the fat-cat business owners have been importing much cheaper labor from China. Of course they forget that during the early periods of Irish immigration to the US, they were the ones undercutting the wages of the Anglo-Saxon incumbents. This has been the case for pretty much every wave of immigration that included a large component of low-skill workers.

This is in play all the way to modern times, without the need for immigration's effects, with the outsourcing and offshoring movements starting in the end of the last century, moving manufacturing to parts of the world with cheaper labor, and now just this year companies realizing they can employ remote knowledge workers (in the same country, even) for less than their current workforce.

This is just normal (for better or worse), and yet you act like it's an aberration that will cause the sky to fall.

> Sucks bro, that's the market.

Sure it is, but who pays the price at the end?

an example is the inner city food deserts

Actually on gdp alone there is enough money in the US for everyone to have a living wage… checkout northern euros or Australia for example of what that looks like.

The problem with the fed stimulus was the benefits too large corps.

US GDP has been lower than China GDP since 2019 and if anything the pandemic accelerated the process of Chinese economic outpacing the US economy. In China there is enough money for everyone to have living wage too. And you pay for you healthcare in China too even though their GDP is enough to cover it for all Chinese citizens. Apparently they are focusing on the big picture, i.e. becoming No.1 and surpassing US by a long shot. Making our currency inflate at 5% a year means we need to deduct that 5% from our GDP growth for that year -- its economics 101.

You want to use China as an example? Sure!

China has the fastest growing and largest middle class (or middle income earners) in the world. They prove exactly the point I’m making. There will come a point in time where there are less people (%) living in poverty in China than in the US if you follow the current trend lines.

Also you are only kind of right with “you pay for healthcare”. It’s heavily subsidised… compared with the US.

Your assumptions are totally incorrect. US has the most subsidized healthcare in the world by GDP. That's for starters. Second, I gave you hard data. What do you give me? Your wishful thinking that China will adhere to your wishes? And start paying for nothing? The Party doesn't pay for nothing. In China you work. And you pay for your doctor.

Why is us health care so expensive then? In Australia drs and hospitals are free… there is no cost. How do you subsidise more than that?

In the US I’ve used the hospital system once (minor treatment, no over night stay) my insurance paid $4000+ usd. In China I’ve used the hospital system for a fairly serious physical injury and was treated very quickly, couple hours and I paid ~$600 rmb.

> In China I’ve used the hospital system for a fairly serious physical injury and was treated very quickly, couple hours and I paid ~$600 rmb.

What does "~$600 rmb" mean? That '$' character is usually called a dollar sign. Do you mean "about US$ 600, but in Renminbi"; or are you just using the dollar sign as a general currency sign, to say "about 600 Renminbi"?

600 rmb.

Emphasising my point what does $150USD get you on an American hospital - maybe a Tylenol?

> US has the most subsidized healthcare in the world by GDP.

No. Just... No, absolutely not. That's among the most factually incorrect statements I've seen anywhere online, let alone on HN. Why would you even write something like that; are you really so utterly ill-informed, or just plain lying?

I think in a really stupid way, it’s correct.

As in: The US spend more on healthcare as a percentage of gdp.

But it pretends that capital efficiency between government spending is equal. As Australia shows: free hospitals for less per/capita(or gdp) spending than the US…

China achieving an equivalent standard of living would probably not work out so well for the authoritarian government there - but it would work out surprisingly well for Marxism. Actually equalizing US and Chinese wages would lead to an extreme acceleration of other areas with depressed wages and, potentially, lead to the world becoming more equal in wages without the current assumed approach - that US wages will deflate quite significantly.

A world where China elevates itself to the US's level is one we should celebrate in the west as it means we need to suffer less ourselves.

Also, the world is well beyond being a zero sum game economically, most of the biggest economic drivers these days are "silly and irrelevant" things like Facebook, Banking and the service industry. All the world can be well off.

>China achieving an equivalent standard of living would probably not work out so well for the authoritarian government there

That myth has been disproven long ago. Achieving a high standard of living and level of education does not magically cause people to pour into the streets and protest against their authoritarian governments.

>A world where China elevates itself to the US's level is one we should celebrate in the west as it means we need to suffer less ourselves.

A world where Xi Jinping is in charge of the global economy is a world where fundamental dignity is stripped from anyone who isn't Han, white-collar, hyper-nationalistic and living on the East Coast of Mainland China.

Many nations in Asia are gearing up economically and militarily to make sure this cannot happen.

This is mild fear mongering - I’m skeptical of Xi myself. But You are projecting the colonial powers’ treatment of the world onto a nation that has never done anything close to what you describe.

People are the same. China is very well known for its extreme nationalistic tendencies. The Party to stay in power must be really, really to the right in terms on nationalism. Without nationalism the Party has no chance staying in power. Read up on the topic. And yes, they treat their minorities extremely bad. Including concentration camps for Ughurs. US compared to them is a pure equality heaven.

The US comparison is just not true, you are ignoring the vast majority of US history when you say something like that.

Nationalism is not the same as subjecting your surrounding neighbours, which is the implication that the OP was making.

>But You are projecting the colonial powers’ treatment of the world onto a nation that has never done anything close to what you describe.

Please read some Chinese history. You'll see the exact same level of brutality, imperialism and aggression shown by the European empires, from Rome to Britain.

Much of central and Western China was only conquered during the last 500 years (basically the same period as European colonialism). They too, experienced forced cultural assimilation and ill treatment. They didn't conquer the globe in the way the Europeans did, but equally they didn't have the naval technology to do so.

Ok… heard of Kublai Khan? Part of the mongol empire circa 1200s preceding the colonial powers existence by a good 500-600 years… That was the Yuan Dynasty (in china) and they conquered a whole lot more than modern day china.

Now since Yuan, you’ve had Ming and Qing… neither of which were particularly aggressive outside of their borders… and Qing was of course the start of the Opium wars, where the colonial powers essentially raped china for all its resources.

With regard to your strange Naval quip. You should look up the Chinese treasure ship. (Ming dynasty)… predates the colonials naval power.

So which Chinese in particular would you like me to read about? Everything you said is factually incorrect. To a laughable degree. I recommend you watch Marco Polo on Netflix, it’d teach you something.

If you're getting your historical education from Netflix, maybe you're not the right person to berate others for theirs.

I don’t. Just suggesting that EVEN Netflix would prove OP points wrong.

I’ve got a major in Chinese History. Maybe get one of those too and come back and we can chat?

Naah, doesn't seem worth it, just for the sake of this discussion. ;-)

Sorry, must have missed the meaning of the "even", so the more charitable reading didn't occur to me.

> That myth has been disproven long ago. Achieving a high standard of living and level of education does not magically cause people to pour into the streets and protest against their authoritarian governments.

While a flip doesn't instantly switch it does cause an erosion of the stability of the government. An enlightened populace is less accepting of authoritarianism than an unenlightened one and the excess luxury time that wealth creates leads more of the populace to enlighten themselves.

That is too simplistic view of the economy. You can't allocate all revenue to payroll. That's not how business or the economy works.

But it is fair to say that economies that look remarkably like our own are able to support higher wages with no catastrophic downsides. The same argument goes for universal healthcare, family and sick leave, etc.

No I don't think that is fair at all and I feel that you need a source that dives deep into the details because it is far more complicated than X country's wages > U.S. wages.

Which part do you want to dive deep? High minimum wages? Or universal health care?

Australia has both, and a smaller gdp/capita than the US. Happy to dive as deep as you like.

On both front, Australia still has effective unions with political representation, and thus corporate interests don’t always win. That’s the main difference with the US.

Stealing from Jeremy Howard on twitter -

"The 5 largest companies in the US are all computer software/hardware.

Australia's largest company is in mining, and 4 of the next 5 are banks.

Australia really needs to join the modern world..." [1]

On top of this you haven't compared -

1. The quality of life difference between minimum wage workers in those countries 2. The quality of health care between these countries 3. Median house hold income (not everyone is on minimum wage) 4. Differences in taxes and "net" pay 5. The differences in the makeup of the economies and conditions of jobs

Honestly the factors are endless and I am not going to spend more time enumerating them all.

[1] https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1403627678528200704

So you want to dive deep or use Twitter quotes?

You want to talk about quality of life difference between $7/hour and $23/hour ??? Sure where do you want to start?

Want to talk about quality of healthcare… the US will lose badly here (except in certain types of cancer). And skewed statistics because the US just refuses treatment to a bunch of folks which hides treatment/mortality rates.

You want to talk about median income 33k (us) vs 43k (au)?

Or back to the more pressing point: when you only have corporate lobbyists and no lobbyists for workers (unions) workers get skrewed across the board.

Look, all I was arguing is that the economies are vastly different. So what if Australia wins on all of those? I don't believe that is true, but it doesn't matter.

All I was saying is you can't use GDP as a gauge for how much money is available for payroll (as suggested by the grandparent). That is very dependent on the economy producing it.

… I don’t understand your point. If you are generating a net surplus, then your economy is growing. If your per capita size is large, then inequality is something government can solve with taxation/redistribution it has nothing to do with whether it is iron ore or software generating the taxable $.

And yes, Australia beats out the US on pretty much any metric you like (unless you are looking for corporate benefit, then the US will win out, it’s much better to be a capitalist in the US)

GDP is gross domestic product. It isn't representative of net surplus. That's my entire point.

You are talking about government spending? And arguing that they may not be in a budgetary surplus?

Because if they are in positive GDP then they are in an economic surplus… that’s what gdp is right? Else they are in a recession.

Neither of which matter to my point, because the pie is ALREADY big enough for a living wage for everyone.

Who is talking about government spending? The OP I was responding to was talking about livable wages provided by corporations. This has nothing to do with the government.

I was clarifying your point, you were saying positive gdp didn’t imply positive economic growth… or size of economy but it does. So what was your meaning?

I am not saying "X country's wages > U.S. wages".

I am saying there are a dozen countries, including several that are extremely similar to the US, that not only have higher wages, and higher minimum wages, but also extensive paid family and vacation leave, universal healthcare and a wide range of quality of life metrics around or above what we see in the US.

I wasn't arguing against those things? I was just referring to the parent's comment that based on our GDP we could afford to pay everyone a living wage. Maybe we can, but using the GDP to gauge that is not a valid way to demonstrate that.

> That is too simplistic view of the economy. You can't allocate all revenue to payroll.

You may be right about this. In fact I'd wager that you are. But the problem isn't that part of what you said; it's this:

> That's not how business or the economy works.

You're probably right about this too! The problem is that, in these conversations, we usually just stop here. Whereas more and more, I'm finding myself asking "can we citizens find ways for business or the economy to work in some other way, even just a little bit? Are we willing to just creatively try and answer some of this stuff?"

I think, if you just stop at "that's not how ___ works" without pushing things further, well, it feels like rolling over. The way "business and the economy worked" in the American South as recently as the 60's was that, if you had a certain skin color, you were relegated to a shitty part of, say, the restaurant, or you were prohibited from participating in the economy in any meaningful sense at all. But then some people asked "is there a way for things to work differently?" It's far from sunshine and gumdrops 55 years later but you can't be chucked out of a lunch counter for being black anymore.

I think he may actually be wrong, maybe... All costs are payroll costs in an abstraction interpretive sort of way. The non-pay roll-costs such as materials goes to pay other people to make and supply the materials. The cost of steel really is the cost to pay another group to mine, refine, and distribute the steel. Every accountant item I believe can be conceived this way.

Capital investment. No one is going to provide capital if there is 0 return. Basically Y Combinator (incl this site) would not exist.

Capital, in turn, is also just accumulated payroll (or, as I think someone called it, labour).

Congratulations, guys, you're well on your way to reinventing Marxian economics.

Another example of reinterpreted payroll costs. Different payment scheme but still paying some other people to be money supply for a business(equity).

OK but you are getting off track here. The parent's argument was that if you take GDP / working Americans = working livable wage. My only point was that doesn't work because of costs and investment.

Sure you could look at capital investment as a form of payroll, but it's going to heavily skew the numbers and now GDP is not a great way to estimate if we can afford to pay a livable wage simply by looking at GDP.

Yeah your right. Whoops!! Sorry my brain misfired when I read your other response. Deepest apologies, im working with low grade human intelligence machinery here. Need to upgrade to super intelligence next time on reincarnation.

Your right, numbers don't show everything and yah just can't redistribute gdp in a communist sort of manner. But I do think one of the parents thinking exercises does indicate that wealth distribution is more of a problem in America than certain European nations.

Capitalism for all it's flaws is a great system to motivate work, wealth creation, and capital investment(as u mentioned).

In an alternative reality fairer system that can muster up a similar work ethic the average person would be better off and you'd have similar innovation potential but with different work ethic driving motivational mechanisms. But that's a improvable hypothetical to be fair. That's your point of contention right?

It's a good approximation, inequality is what is skewing it in the US.

>if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society by working are eroded and redistributed to those who don't wish to work.

I bet I can guess which group you think you belong to.

>caused a labor shortage and inflation.

The US Government printing money is why used cars, washing machines, and hotels are getting more expensive, while other categories stay generally below historical levels?

The only reason people think "inflation" is bad is that it was bad one time in the 70s, except that was actually stagflation, and the cause was running out of a resource (oil) and not because the wage/price increases didn't match up. I guess some people might think Weimar hyperinflation lead to the Nazis, but it didn't really.

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