Shanek could you please respond to this. [Archive]

Mr.Kitchen

12th March 2004, 03:15 PM

I know you probaly see alot of people whining about "outsourcing" and i certainly don't think of my self as your equal in the realm of economics. However I have been reading and thinking about these thing lately.
I'd like you to respond first to a thought I had and then to an article i will link to wirtten by a former reagen economist.

I'm worried about the wages and other benefits that worker will be able to get in the future. The reason for my concern is simple each year there are more and more people and it seems companies are increasing productivity per person to the pont that it requires fewer people to do the even morre work than was done before. So here is what i think is happening the demand for workers is decreasing and the supply is rapidly increasing. How are people supposed to survive in that situation.

and now for the article

Paul craig Roberts article trade nothink (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/paulcraigroberts/pcr20030819.shtml)

please respond at your leisure i would like to see your perspective.

Jeremy

shanek

12th March 2004, 05:08 PM

Originally posted by Mr.Kitchen
I'm worried about the wages and other benefits that worker will be able to get in the future. The reason for my concern is simple each year there are more and more people and it seems companies are increasing productivity per person to the pont that it requires fewer people to do the even morre work than was done before. So here is what i think is happening the demand for workers is decreasing and the supply is rapidly increasing. How are people supposed to survive in that situation.

I don't have time to read the article right now, but I do want to go ahead and respond to this.

We could pretty much maintain the standard of living we had 100 years ago by only working a couple hours a week. BUT, that would mean giving up things like electricity and running water. Economies improve the quality of life by taking advantage of the very effect that you have noticed: businesses, through the use of technology and other innovations, make each individual person more productive. That way, you free up the rest of the labor force to do things like make refrigerators and TVs which didn't even exist before. That's what the free market does. The ultimate "goal" (put in quotes because it's really anthropomorphizing) of an economy is to make the most out of every available resource, and that includes labor. So if you don't need as many people to deliver what people need (and what they feel they needactually increases over time, too, as I pointed out), you can spend more time delivering what they want. And fortunately, our wants are infinite—we'll always want more than we have, so the market will innovate to try and figure out what that is, make it, and sell it to us.

That's why even our poor have things like color TVs and DVD players. Here (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27305) is a thread from awhile back on that very subject. Even among our poorest people, we have no starvation, and we were pretty much the first in the world at that. The CDC doesn't even have a category for it.

There are two reasons why it doesn't look that way right now. One, we're in a recession, which is a result of producing too much stuff. When we get so efficient that we're producing more than people consume, this is what happens. So a recession hits, and these are big incentives for companies to gear up and innovate and start growing again. Normally they don't last this long, but thanks to government interference in the economy they just keep getting extended far, far longer than they should be.

Which brings me to the second reason why it doesn't look that way. So many things government does stifle jobs and the economy. Even much-touted things like the Minimum Wage, for example; when you look at it, all a $6 Minimum Wage does is ban jobs that aren't worth that much, and force people who can't demand that much into unemployment. It also forces the jobs overseas where they can pay the workers what the job's actually worth. Same with things like mandatory health benefits and oppressive income taxes. It even goes into our monetary system; the Federal Reserve has done hardly anything except make things worse whenever it has acted, stifling investment and causing inflation. And the Federal government's $2+ trillion budget and hideous debt hardly help things.

I could go on (and on and on and on, at terrible length, until you start foaming at the mouth and yelling, "Stop it! Stop it!! NO MORE!!!!"), but that should get you the idea. If you want more info, do a search in this forum for threads I've created and you'll get tons of information, with references and evidence to back it all up.

Oh, and welcome to the forum!