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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (35281)	8/7/2010 6:37:35 PM
From: grusum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

"if jobs are eventually eliminated due to the efficiency of the markets, then how would people survive without an income?" well, i don't mean that all jobs get eliminated. but as less workers are needed due to increasing efficiency of labor, the hours needed for labor lessens slowly over time. and as labor increases in efficiency, the value of that labor naturally goes up. in dollar terms, you'd get more dollars for your labor so you need to work less hours. or you can have a steady dollar with gradual price deflation so your same amount of dollars buy more. in either case, it is the value of labor that has increased. and it increased because of efficiency, not demand. so your standard of living can actually improve while you work less hours. the remaining jobs get shared throughout the economy. what i mean by that is that hours get naturally reduced on average to reflect the eliminated jobs, so you might have the same number of people working less hours. maybe it is more accurate to say that hours worked get reduced on average. but actual jobs do get eliminated. this is what ideally would happen in a highly efficient free market economy. i think the important thing to keep in mind is that the standard of living would be improving. your labor would buy you more, so you wouldn't need to work as long, or maybe as often. ---------------- "And isn't the notion of "there would always be a need for human labor" inconsistent with the first idea of the eventual extinction of jobs?" i don't think jobs will ever be totally eliminated. but there are some people that believe that machines or robots will eventually do everything for humans. i don't think it will happen, but it might. remember i'm talking about an ideal free market economy. we don't have one now, and i'm not sure that we ever had one. but i think we had very close to a free market economy when the nation was founded.