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I'm not aware of any socialist economy collapsing simply due to mass underemployment. Most socialist ex-economies collapsed primarily due to the effects of the
by parenthephobia 10y ago
I'm not aware of any socialist economy collapsing simply due to mass underemployment. Most socialist ex-economies collapsed primarily due to the effects of the end of the cold war. They were generally already devastated by WW2. It is by no means certain that a capitalist economy would have fared any better.
Not that it necessarily matters, since most "socialist" economies didn't really have anything like a basic income. The closest was probably the USSR, where everyone was notionally guaranteed an income, but only because everyone was guaranteed a job, and voluntary long-term joblessness was illegal.
The fact of the matter is that there has never been a country-scale attempt at implementing a basic income. Nothing even resembling a basic income has been employed in a country that didn't also have its economy devastated by war - whether civil, cold, or world. The small-scale trials of basic income have had either neutral or positive outcomes.
- kamaal 10y ago>>socialist economy collapsing simply due to mass underemployment The problem here is not underemployment. Underemployment is a situation where people want to work, but don't have jobs. The situation I mentioned systematically disincentivizes working making it very easy to get by life without work. The net situation is people feel they are entitled to free stuff without doing any work for it. And its always somebody else responsibility to provide for them, while they do nothing at all to contribute anything back. >>Most socialist ex-economies collapsed primarily due to the effects of the end of the cold war. Cold war was the perfect test of which country could retain their best. There were barely any incentives to stay in socialist countries. At any given point of time a minority was slogging till death to feed the remaining mouths in their countries. Why do think you so many people from countries like India(Largely still socialistic society) want to move to US? Robbing Peter to feed Paul only works that long. >>They were generally already devastated by WW2. It is by no means certain that a capitalist economy would have fared any better. That's strange since none of the socialist economies did better even those which didn't participate in the world wars. >>The fact of the matter is that there has never been a country-scale attempt at implementing a basic income. Sorry, you say- since nothing like it with 100% match existed before we should discard cases with 99.99999% match.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoToday we have automation on a scale never before experienced. Ultimately we will need approximately 0% of our population to work. This is not a problem; its actually the goal. We are not there yet, but a BI is a step.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoNonsense. Automation was the same 12 months, and largely the same 10 years ago. 0% working for some definitions of work. People want to be and do all sorts of things and will continue to, automation should help us live more comfortably and more gently on the earth, not make us redundant.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoFactory automation today means almost nobody is needed to work factory jobs. And there is no longer a path from the factory floor to technical, engineering or management roles. Just minimum-wage standins for broken/missing equipment (moving a box from one conveyor to another during a rush). 34 million Americans resort to minimum-wage jobs because there's nothing else. This is not a fad or a downturn; its the new normal. Citation: this article calls manufacturing automation "an explosion" in the last decade. http://www.automationworld.com/manufacturing-trends-2015 http://www.automationworld.com/manufacturing-trends-2015