zlacker

>>tysone+(OP)
If there are only 19 bones for every 20 dogs, then it doesn't matter how good a bone hunter they all are there will always be one dog disappointed and the other 19 will be grateful for the bone no matter how thin and weedy it is. Systemically the 'interest rate targeting' approach starts to tighten up policy when unemployment gets below 5% - which they consider 'full employment' even though 1 in 20 haven't got jobs.

Interest rate targeting uses an unemployment buffer to keep wages and therefore prices under control. Poverty for those in work is entirely part of the plan. To fix the poverty problem you need to fix the structural viewpoint and return to the Beveridge condition - everybody must have an alternative living wage job offer available to them so that job competition works properly in favour of people. There must always be more jobs available than people that want them, not slightly fewer.

But that then runs into what Kalecki called "The Political Aspects of Full Employment" - a recommended read if you haven't already: https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-em...

Truly a 'wicked problem' - tied up with the concept of power

>>neilwi+1X
And, of course you need a way to prevent employers from using various alternatives available to them.

* You need very high import taxes, so goods have to be produced with local labour

* If truly automation were to become pervasive, that needs taxing

* You probably need restrictions to prevent money from crossing borders too easily

* You can't have open borders

(or)

* You have to strongly respond to illegals working (or legalize them, while still killing those illegal jobs), because they'll destroy the bargaining power of others

(this is, incidentally, why for 90% of history leftists and communists were strongly against immigration, and the right was pro-immigration. Even today, the right is still in favor of (limited) immigration, that doesn't seem to have changed much. But I sometimes wonder if it isn't the case that Trump won because a significant portion of the left electorate voted for him because of the labour competition due to immigration and tolerating of illegal immigrants and illegal immigrants' labour)

>>candio+uX
Alternatively, we could ditch the neo-feudalism, embrace automation, and give people a more meaningful live than having to slave 60 hour weeks to be allowed to survive, at meaningless jobs that could easily be done by machines.

>>PeterS+TX
But the neo-feudalism makes like 100 people happy, so, checkmate, you communist!!

(On a more serious note, I fully expect automation to simply lead to automated armies defending the rich from the poor, rather than relieving any suffering anywhere. Productivity increases have not lead to (proportional) wage increases, have not lead to (proportional) reductions in working hours. The internet has not lead to information-driven utopia, but instead ad-serving dystopia. Automation will also fall to the deathly grip of capitalism, as does everything else.)