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The Laffer curve deals with output from labor. When you tax someone you reduce the money they get per unit work, i.e. their wage. If the wage is too low they mi

The Laffer curve deals with output from labor. When you tax someone you reduce the money they get per unit work, i.e. their wage. If the wage is too low they might not find it worth doing the work. If I'm a paid shill/some job and I'm taxed 99%, I might stop shilling because the effort outweighs my salary. Regarding automation, see the lump of labour fallacy. Humans will just switch to tasks that aren't automated (this has always been happening and it's happening now). If humans are not needed at all, then we've reached utopia/post-scarcity society. Humans don't work less because of the hedonistic treadmill. For example, most HNers have enough food and other things to survive which might be considered paradise by people 500 years ago (famines were common back then). Historically, poverty often meant death from starvation. Our standards of living have been constantly going up, so even though there are productivity gains we end up working more. Of course, that's a voluntary choice so I don't see anything wrong with that.

c22 10y ago
Once we've reached utopia/post-scarcity society how will we make sure that poor people get fed?
- witty_username 10y ago
  In a post-scarcity society food/etc is very cheap and thus even poor people can afford sufficient food even if they don't work much (this is already true for developed countries). Even a small amount of charity would provide anybody who can't work at all with sufficient food. Just like how today data storage in hard drives is dirt cheap; and we can provide billions of bytes of storage at nominal cost. Looking at current society, starvation and mass famines have decreased greatly. Malnutrition is the next concern. So, in some sense we may have reached post-scarcity for food for a large portion of human population. But there is still scarcity for quality and healthy food, such as fruits and vegetables.

c22 10y ago

Once we've reached utopia/post-scarcity society how will we make sure that poor people get fed?

witty_username 10y ago
In a post-scarcity society food/etc is very cheap and thus even poor people can afford sufficient food even if they don't work much (this is already true for developed countries). Even a small amount of charity would provide anybody who can't work at all with sufficient food. Just like how today data storage in hard drives is dirt cheap; and we can provide billions of bytes of storage at nominal cost. Looking at current society, starvation and mass famines have decreased greatly. Malnutrition is the next concern. So, in some sense we may have reached post-scarcity for food for a large portion of human population. But there is still scarcity for quality and healthy food, such as fruits and vegetables.