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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (15742)	4/22/2017 12:22:05 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 365141

One summer in HS, a buddy and I took a job at a construction site. The boss had us dig a big hole and wheelbarrow the dirt about 50 yards away into a pile. We spent about a week doing that. When we had finished the hole to spec, we asked him what he wanted us to do next. He said we could take the dirt from the pile and put it back into the hole! We asked why he had had us dig the hole. He said that he didn't need us when we had applied, but he wanted us around for when he did need us. After conferring with each other, we decided to quit. We'd worked really hard on that make-work, useless hole in the blazing Texas summer heat. Because of that experience, I think make work jobs are out.

To: i-node who wrote (15742)	4/22/2017 12:22:20 AM
From: Dracin72	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 365141

<It is worth thinking about, though. > It is a very difficult problem for which I don't know if there is an existing economic structure or theory to address. Not everyone wants to be a doctor, computer programmer, scholar etc. nor does everyone have the capacity to do so even if education from K through PhD, MD or JD were free. As automation of all kinds removes human labor there will as Bill Gates said a need for a new tax structure that taxes the automation at the tax rate of the labor it replaces. One fallacy of free college education is the belief that everyone wants a college education. And many of those blue collar workers have no interest in being told they have to pay taxes for someone else to get one. I myself am the only individual in my family that has a college degree and my immediate family, all democrats btw, when this subject comes up I ask would you pay more taxes for people to go to college for free and their answer is overwhelmingly no. It is another example of one group, the college educated trying to put its own viewpoint as the one that must be accepted. I don't know what the right answer is but I agree longterm going forward some tough choices have to be made.

To: i-node who wrote (15742)	4/22/2017 12:00:10 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 365141

You still haven't answered the question. Our economy is driven by consumption, about 3 quarters of it. As all mature economies with the possible exception of Germany, which has the EU as a captive market. Even China is rushing headlong into a consumer driven economy to maintain growth. There is just no way to expand exports to make up the difference. I suppose that finance can push out other countries and take over the world. I am not sure that really solves the problem, though. About the only way to maintain a market-driven economy is to eliminate all of the parasitic forces that Adam Smith complained about. LIke rent seeking. And concentrations of wealth. We become a post-industrial economy where a bunch of roughly the same sized businesses competing on a level playing field. Even services. Even that would take some form of socialism to pull off. Not as all encompassing as the models that have failed. Partial solutions do seem to work, long term.

To: i-node who wrote (15742)	4/22/2017 1:07:33 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 365141

You keep saying the same thing over and over and you get corrected over and over don't seem to learn. When you say socialism doesn't work, of course it does! I-node:" The reason it is a hard problem is that socialism doesn't work. Never has." We are talking about democratic socialism i.e. which is what every single city in this country has and every single state. What in the hell do you think a police forces is, the fire department, the water department, the sewage department, the public school system, the planning department and on and on and on. A city cannot exist without those socialist programs and they are all socialist in nature. Nobody is talking about socialism beyond Democratic socialism. Bernie sure isn't. So people do have a say in that they elect the people to represent them to determine just how much socialism they want.. There is no other way on earth better than that that I know of. Do you know of a better way? You need to learn what you're talking about-lol! Message #15742 from i-node at 4/22/2017 12:09:11 AM >> If you've got another one, let's hear it. The reason it is a hard problem is that socialism doesn't work. Never has. And isn't going to. People must have a reasonable degree of control over their own economic lives or there is no freedom. Sanders-styled socialism demonstrably does not offer that. While I am pessimistic, as my previous post mentioned, I think it is likely that the wealthy bloc will serve their own interests and maintain sufficient diversity of wealth to keep intact a market economy because that does maximize corporate and personal self-interest. It is worth thinking about, though. It is hard to know where this is headed and a wide array of possible outcomes exist. It doesn't look good to me, though. Mainly because there is no serious thought being given to it by world leaders.