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I have a hard time understanding the future macro-economy of the U.S. Where does the money come from and where does it go? We've all seen towns and cities decim

I have a hard time understanding the future macro-economy of the U.S. Where does the money come from and where does it go? We've all seen towns and cities decimated when the factories close or shrink because the thing that's buying raw materials, adding value, and selling it for a profit to generate revenue which is used to pay its workers, taxes, etc. is no longer there. A whole generation or two then moved to becoming simply middle-men, where goods were made somewhere else, marked up to pay rent and employees, and then sold. Now that model is going away as markets become more efficient and Walmart, Dollar General and Amazon (my employer for transparency, though I don't work for the store side) cut out the middle man. Where do 245 million American adults go next to make a living? When robots are driving all the trucks, picking all the fruit, and making most of the goods (all will come to pass within the next 50-100 years), and stores become more about shipping than shopping, where do people work?

Eric_WVGG 8y ago
Well that’s the argument for Universal Basic Income in a nutshell.
- acct1771 8y ago
  See Saudi Arabia to see how this ends.
  - niyazpk 8y ago
    I am not entirely certain that all of Saudi Arabia's problems can be attributed to UBI.
    - acct1771 8y ago
      Didn't say that. Just that the currently most likely scenario is the Feudalism in Saudi Arabia. Millions of dependents of varying capability (some 0) depending on a central authority.
mymythisisthis 8y ago
We need to create laws about ethical data management so companies like Google and Facebook will be forced to hire more people. The algorithms don't work; hate speech, Russian trolls, anti-vax, etc, are all screwing up things too much.
didibus 8y ago
> where do people work Work isn't the end goal is it? The point is, people want produce and services. They use these to survive and to entertain. Normally, it was the case you couldn't by yourself produce and serve all the things and needs that you had for survival and entertainment. So up till now, everyone had to work and divide the tasks. Now, we can produce and serve without everyone needing to work. The end goal is still, how can we produce and serve for everyone. That will be a political and social challenge. But when you think about it on a technical level, we've never been this close to reaching this goal. Where as before, this wasn't even technically possible. The question is, will social progress catch up with and follow technical progress?
- philwelch 8y ago
  > Work isn't the end goal is it? The point is, people want produce and services. They use these to survive and to entertain. False. People also want--need--to have a purpose in life and to contribute to society in some way.
  - lostapathy 8y ago
    Raising children, making art, creating a band. All of these give people that sense of purpose, but are not really captured by the GP post's notion of "work".
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Artists and musicians can at least make marginal amounts of money, and if you're speculating about a fully automated future where robots do all of the real work, those marginal amounts of money could end up being enough to live on after all.
  - Noumenon72 8y ago
    That's cultural or individual. I felt a little bit guilty during my two years off since other people were supporting me in hard conditions like drilling oil on the North Slope, but I could have continued surfing the web and kayaking indefinitely.
trumped 8y ago
Ez ... goes from the poor to the rich until the economy busts open
randycupertino 8y ago
Have you read the article on disability being the new welfare for blue collar workers in middle america? I suspect that's already filling the gap. http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
InclinedPlane 8y ago
A common sentiment but one rooted in a basic misconception about there being a maximum amount of work available to do. There's no such thing. The amount of undone work at any given time is effectively infinite. There are always jobs being left undone, always. Many of them. That's especially obvious today when we have huge debts in terms of infrastructure building and city development. Or just general stewardship. There are so many waste disposal problems in the developed world that are currently in a holding pattern. For non-nuclear waste there are very clear routes toward remediation and disposal, for example. And yet all these projects languish on the back burner because we just can't afford them. Consider just one example, Seattle is currently in the process of installing sidewalks throughout the entire city, at present rates of progress it will take 1800 years to finish. Think about that for a moment and then consider that a lot of basic infrastructure and urban development projects in other cities are in similar shape. And this doesn't even include new jobs that don't exist currently. In 1850 there were no movie stars, no TV advertising studios, no e-sports players, no vloggers, and there were vastly fewer and less well paid professional actors, musicians, and writers. Also, people in 1850 didn't have toilets, showers, dishwashers, refrigerators, televisions, instant pots, smartphones, or insulin. The amount of labor needed to supply the standard of living of 1850 in 2019 is vastly less than the labor that was used to supply it in 1850. The same trend will continue in the future. By 2050 the labor needed to supply a 2019 standard of living will be less than what was used in 2019. There will be jobs that don't exist today in 2050, and 2040, and 2030, and even 2020, that's how the economy works. That's been true throughout the entire holocene. The problem is not fundamentally about the size of the well of labor to be done, that well is bottomless. The problem is rather one of economics and monetary systems. And this is not a new problem either. When wealth is hyper concentrated it actually reduces economic activity (which, remember, has nothing to do with money and everything to do with goods and services) because it shunts a huge percentage of the population out of active participation in the economy. Imagine an alternate world with different money systems in circulation, for simplicity let's just imagine two sets: rich and poor people money. Imagine that it is illegal to trade one for the other (meaning you cannot use rich people money to buy up poor people money), imagine that you take all of the money as it exists today in the developed world and you label it "rich people money". Then, you introduce a new set of currency, the only thing special about it is that people in the top 1/4 by income (of rich people money) are legally prohibited from owning it or using it. Now you have this entire sub-economy of the bottom 3/4 who are isolated from the rest. Will people do jobs, provide services and make goods only for "poor people money"? Of course they will, because ultimately the money is just a medium for exchanging labor and value. People whose labor isn't valued in the rich people money economy will likely still be able to sell their work in the poor people money economy. And, as I said, there is an effectively infinite pool of work to be done so there will be jobs for people to do. Everyone in the developed world today has needs that aren't being met currently, all an economy is is a way for people to meet each others needs through labor via a medium of exchange. Now, you can get to a state of having just one set of money and one whole economy where everyone is fully participatory but you need to bring up the wages and decrease the inequality in the system. If the wage floor in the US were closer to the $20/hr norm from the mid 20th century instead of the $7/hr it is today then there'd be a lot more money in the hands of those in the bottom 3/4 of the economy. And those people would be able to build their wealth, employ others, spend more money on more goods and services, etc. and result in a more fully participatory economy. We've spent the last nearly half century practically wrecking our own economic system, raiding it for the benefit of the hyper-elite. This is not a natural nor necessary development, it has been a choice. And we can just as easily choose other things to do.
philwelch 8y ago
Are jobs disappearing or just geographically concentrating? It's obvious that some jobs are, if anything, even more lucrative than before, leading to wider disparities in productivity and, consequently, income. And when that happens, historically, you start to see things that we haven't seen yet, like large numbers of live-in domestic servants. Maybe the current "service economy" or even "gig economy" is basically the same thing at heart. But when that happens, jobs don't disappear; they geographically concentrate. And because America doesn't do density and urbanization very well, this causes more disruption than it otherwise would.
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
> Where do 245 million American adults go next to make a living? For any arbitrary company, its not their problem. They're there to make shareholders an extra buck for the quarter. Or at most, they hold a 5 year look at the far end. Further? 10 year? 20 year? Nope. Not at all. For the individual, of course we care. But there's not much to be done about it. Id say voting works, but with regulatory capture and money in politics/legalized bribery where it is, I'm not seeing much difference. Maybe we should just cash in on the momentary money while we have a chance.

Eric_WVGG 8y ago

Well that’s the argument for Universal Basic Income in a nutshell.

acct1771 8y ago
See Saudi Arabia to see how this ends.
- niyazpk 8y ago
  I am not entirely certain that all of Saudi Arabia's problems can be attributed to UBI.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Didn't say that. Just that the currently most likely scenario is the Feudalism in Saudi Arabia. Millions of dependents of varying capability (some 0) depending on a central authority.

mymythisisthis 8y ago

We need to create laws about ethical data management so companies like Google and Facebook will be forced to hire more people. The algorithms don't work; hate speech, Russian trolls, anti-vax, etc, are all screwing up things too much.

didibus 8y ago

> where do people work Work isn't the end goal is it? The point is, people want produce and services. They use these to survive and to entertain. Normally, it was the case you couldn't by yourself produce and serve all the things and needs that you had for survival and entertainment. So up till now, everyone had to work and divide the tasks. Now, we can produce and serve without everyone needing to work. The end goal is still, how can we produce and serve for everyone. That will be a political and social challenge. But when you think about it on a technical level, we've never been this close to reaching this goal. Where as before, this wasn't even technically possible. The question is, will social progress catch up with and follow technical progress?

philwelch 8y ago
> Work isn't the end goal is it? The point is, people want produce and services. They use these to survive and to entertain. False. People also want--need--to have a purpose in life and to contribute to society in some way.
- lostapathy 8y ago
  Raising children, making art, creating a band. All of these give people that sense of purpose, but are not really captured by the GP post's notion of "work".
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Artists and musicians can at least make marginal amounts of money, and if you're speculating about a fully automated future where robots do all of the real work, those marginal amounts of money could end up being enough to live on after all.
- Noumenon72 8y ago
  That's cultural or individual. I felt a little bit guilty during my two years off since other people were supporting me in hard conditions like drilling oil on the North Slope, but I could have continued surfing the web and kayaking indefinitely.

trumped 8y ago

Ez ... goes from the poor to the rich until the economy busts open

randycupertino 8y ago

Have you read the article on disability being the new welfare for blue collar workers in middle america? I suspect that's already filling the gap. http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

InclinedPlane 8y ago

A common sentiment but one rooted in a basic misconception about there being a maximum amount of work available to do. There's no such thing. The amount of undone work at any given time is effectively infinite. There are always jobs being left undone, always. Many of them. That's especially obvious today when we have huge debts in terms of infrastructure building and city development. Or just general stewardship. There are so many waste disposal problems in the developed world that are currently in a holding pattern. For non-nuclear waste there are very clear routes toward remediation and disposal, for example. And yet all these projects languish on the back burner because we just can't afford them. Consider just one example, Seattle is currently in the process of installing sidewalks throughout the entire city, at present rates of progress it will take 1800 years to finish. Think about that for a moment and then consider that a lot of basic infrastructure and urban development projects in other cities are in similar shape. And this doesn't even include new jobs that don't exist currently. In 1850 there were no movie stars, no TV advertising studios, no e-sports players, no vloggers, and there were vastly fewer and less well paid professional actors, musicians, and writers. Also, people in 1850 didn't have toilets, showers, dishwashers, refrigerators, televisions, instant pots, smartphones, or insulin. The amount of labor needed to supply the standard of living of 1850 in 2019 is vastly less than the labor that was used to supply it in 1850. The same trend will continue in the future. By 2050 the labor needed to supply a 2019 standard of living will be less than what was used in 2019. There will be jobs that don't exist today in 2050, and 2040, and 2030, and even 2020, that's how the economy works. That's been true throughout the entire holocene. The problem is not fundamentally about the size of the well of labor to be done, that well is bottomless. The problem is rather one of economics and monetary systems. And this is not a new problem either. When wealth is hyper concentrated it actually reduces economic activity (which, remember, has nothing to do with money and everything to do with goods and services) because it shunts a huge percentage of the population out of active participation in the economy. Imagine an alternate world with different money systems in circulation, for simplicity let's just imagine two sets: rich and poor people money. Imagine that it is illegal to trade one for the other (meaning you cannot use rich people money to buy up poor people money), imagine that you take all of the money as it exists today in the developed world and you label it "rich people money". Then, you introduce a new set of currency, the only thing special about it is that people in the top 1/4 by income (of rich people money) are legally prohibited from owning it or using it. Now you have this entire sub-economy of the bottom 3/4 who are isolated from the rest. Will people do jobs, provide services and make goods only for "poor people money"? Of course they will, because ultimately the money is just a medium for exchanging labor and value. People whose labor isn't valued in the rich people money economy will likely still be able to sell their work in the poor people money economy. And, as I said, there is an effectively infinite pool of work to be done so there will be jobs for people to do. Everyone in the developed world today has needs that aren't being met currently, all an economy is is a way for people to meet each others needs through labor via a medium of exchange. Now, you can get to a state of having just one set of money and one whole economy where everyone is fully participatory but you need to bring up the wages and decrease the inequality in the system. If the wage floor in the US were closer to the $20/hr norm from the mid 20th century instead of the $7/hr it is today then there'd be a lot more money in the hands of those in the bottom 3/4 of the economy. And those people would be able to build their wealth, employ others, spend more money on more goods and services, etc. and result in a more fully participatory economy. We've spent the last nearly half century practically wrecking our own economic system, raiding it for the benefit of the hyper-elite. This is not a natural nor necessary development, it has been a choice. And we can just as easily choose other things to do.

philwelch 8y ago

Are jobs disappearing or just geographically concentrating? It's obvious that some jobs are, if anything, even more lucrative than before, leading to wider disparities in productivity and, consequently, income. And when that happens, historically, you start to see things that we haven't seen yet, like large numbers of live-in domestic servants. Maybe the current "service economy" or even "gig economy" is basically the same thing at heart. But when that happens, jobs don't disappear; they geographically concentrate. And because America doesn't do density and urbanization very well, this causes more disruption than it otherwise would.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

> Where do 245 million American adults go next to make a living? For any arbitrary company, its not their problem. They're there to make shareholders an extra buck for the quarter. Or at most, they hold a 5 year look at the far end. Further? 10 year? 20 year? Nope. Not at all. For the individual, of course we care. But there's not much to be done about it. Id say voting works, but with regulatory capture and money in politics/legalized bribery where it is, I'm not seeing much difference. Maybe we should just cash in on the momentary money while we have a chance.