I don't understand your question, but I'll just run with the anti-minimum wage thrust of it.

I've said here before I'm already completely sold on the economic arguments that things would be better if there were not a minimum wage at all. However, I also am a realist and know that that could only happen in the midst of a general libertarian legislative revolution, which doesn't look in the offing. We have to work in the world as it is, and it seems to me that raising the minimum wage, tying it to inflation so we don't ever have to have the discussion again, and eliminating the social programs which pay for things the money from a job should pay for would be good for the economy and probably for our culture as a whole.

That could be quite wrong. I stopped looking at scholarly economics material once I realized I couldn't go Calc II so it's not something I really, truly know about like German grammar, how to ace a poli sci paper, or how to use WestlawNext.

@Invictus - serious point, you used the word hate in your OP i.e. 'I hate my generation'....... do you think that hate destroys the vessel that contains it and that by hating you are heading for a miserable life and an early death?
Do you think that happy people in general lead longer more fulfilled lives? If so why not work on the childhood issues that have left you with so much hate inside......

Sometimes you really are a perfect troll

I thank you......

Despite my vague question, you answered it. Thank you, Invictus. How long have you spoke German?

Notice how I said German grammar and not being able to speak it. Fluency is a spectacularly difficult thing to achieve in any language. To somewhat answer your question, though, one of my degrees is in German and I lived in Vienna for six months.

To be honest, the free market is predicated on market participants being able to negotiate from roughly equal standing, yet the labor market necessarily entails asymmetric power, especially in an era of giant corporations. Thus, the minimum wage merely corrects a market distortion inherent in the economic structure we have currently

How do you get a degree in German without being able to speak it?

I just have a more rigorous definition of fluency than most people. I would have no problem having a conversation with a German speaker and in my prime I was writing twenty page papers all in German on things like the European parliament and Brecht. But could I, say, do my taxes in German if I lived there? Or hold down a white-collar job there? Or even tell a good joke in German? No.

Be very suspicious of people who put forward a language degree as proof they've mastered another tongue. You more or less take the same four or five classes over and over again. Once you've mastered the basics it's very easy to do well academically, but that's a far different thing from really being good at it.

Well that's a shame.

@ Invictus

I agree with you regarding the article. Complete hogwash, all of it.

Say it was possible to have a society in which no one had to work in order to make a comfortable (not luxurious, but not poor) living financially. Huge hypothetical, I know, but try to envision it. What are the downsides to this, assuming that the financial ability to support this massive social welfare was in place?

What would people spend their time doing? Just getting into trouble, I suspect.

So if someone isn't forced to work regularly from ages 20 - 60 to make a living, he's gonna cause trouble? Is it silly to have a bit more faith in humanity?

@Invictus:

"I support constitutional, democratic government with sound policies. Policies don't exist in a vacuum though, and in examining whether something is actually a good idea we really need to look at what incentives it creates, both economic and political. Giving people free money gives politicians the incentive to keep on raising it since "more free money" is, for obvious reasons, a winning electoral promise. Get it high enough, as is pretty much inevitable, and the incentive to work all but vanishes. Then the whole rotten edifice falls down since there just won't be enough economic activity to support the program."

Let me put it this way: right now, the amount of "free money" in this context is 0. According to you, politics would raise that number. Why is it still 0?

No politician in that huge country used "free money" as an election plan yet?

"right now, the amount of "free money" in this context is 0. According to you, politics would raise that number. Why is it still 0?"

A very silly thing to say, but I'll run with it. It's still zero because the program doesn't exist. And it doesn't exist because it's so transparently disastrous that the political system prevents a blanket free-money program from being enacted.

But, as I said, we can see the mechanism at work in other, existing programs. Public sector union pensions and veterans' benefits are classic examples. Another example would be the grain ration in ancient Rome, where the people of Rome (the city) were given first subsidezed and then outright free grain. Under the Republic, politicians would use this program to sway elections (yes, there were elected offices) in their favor. Under the Empire during the principate, the emperors used it to draw still further power from the Senate and shore up their popularity with the masses.

A free money program applied generally would suffer from this same effect. Eventually it would reach a dollar ammount where working would be entirely optional for someone to have to work to get the resources to provide themselves an adequate life. This means fewer people would bother working, which would lead to economic collapse. Put simply, a program like this hasn't been created because policy makers realize how dumb of an idea it is.

"...This means fewer people would bother working, which would lead to economic collapse...."

I claim this statement was true in the recent past but isn't necessarily the case anymore due to the advent of technology.

@ y2kjbk

"I claim this statement was true in the recent past but isn't necessarily the case anymore due to the advent of technology."

Don't overestimate the capabilities of current-generation robotics and automation. Humans aren't obsolete yet. But I do believe we are fast becoming a society in which human beings will have fewer and fewer purposes.

But maybe we're obsolete enough already to the point where unemployment issues are pretty much permanent until we change the game up and rethink the entire structure of the modern day workforce.

four of those five are BS

a basic income would actually be a good idea IF we replaced all welfare programs and all govt spending that creates jobs* with it

*: I mean directly creating jobs that do nothing, not legislation meant to provide economic growth. talking about various administrative paper-pushers that don't contribute anything of economic value and only exist because of legislative pork. also means killing a lot of military spending because guess what, most of it is BS as well

@ y2kjbk

Would you support a reversion to a society in which humans had more roles in society? In other words "going backwards" for the sake of economic health?

"Don't overestimate the capabilities of current-generation robotics and automation. Humans aren't obsolete yet. But I do believe we are fast becoming a society in which human beings will have fewer and fewer purposes. "

Until a creative AI comes along, humans will still be required. A machine can design some microelectronics but only following the guidance of a human at this point, and computers can't yet write their own software.

@Gunfighter: how are you going to force government organizations and private corporations to forego the economic benefits of increased efficiency due to the use of technology in favor of much less efficient human manual labor? Does that sound like a good way to you to ensure economic health?

@Draugnar: the roles you describe as still necessary to be done by a human would still be done by humans. It's all the menial jobs out there that I claim we should be restructuring to be completely automated, and utilize the financial savings and growth to support a basic lifestyle that American Citizens can choose to live by, and it would entail receiving a comfortable financial living arrangement from the government in turn for simply following the law and possibly participating in some basic community service or adult education courses. Sounds a hell of a lot better to both the individuals and American society as a whole, compared with the current system of paying subpar unemployment benefits to people until they get off their ass and make a little more at a low-level job, doing the job much less efficiently than a machine could. Why shove people into the workforce when it's not necessary to society and hurtful to the overall goal of promoting economic efficiency AND social welfare?

@y2k - Which is why I quoted (and therefore responded to) Gunfighter.

<smacks forhead> Garrrr....ugh....vomit vomit vomit....another lazy moron rears his ugly head...oh, wait, I was talking about your future negotiations for an NAP in assholes of the world unite...sorry..

But I will ask what the motivation would be to become doctors and engineers and software developers and lawyers and CEOs and CFOs and CTOs and...

Good point as always Krellin

A CEO or CFO or CTO or doctor or any job that isn't menial would stay around. I don't know the exact breakdown of the labor force, but my guess is that the percentage of jobs that fall into the category I'm using called "menial jobs" is maybe somewhere between 20-30% of the workforce? The vast majority of decently paid jobs would remain untouched and would pay a decent amount more than the bottom support system since they are inherently necessary to have alongside the increase in technology. The social net system would be utilized by well under half the population.