Oh, the new argument is we need labor-intensive jobs for the stupid people?
How is that busywork better than giving them something economically useful to do, like enter a training program? Oh, right, they’re too stupid to be trained to do something useful. I forgot they are the subhuman underclass.
You sidestepped the question of what an individual ought to do when the buggy-whip manufacturer goes out of business. There are only 2 answers: find a different trade, or lobby against free-trade economic policies. Sounds like you’re against free trade then?
Say what? You honestly think 100% of the population can be rocket scientists? Well, if you don’t then you agree that there are stratifications of ability. I’m not sure why you need to refer to fellow citizens as subhuman though.
Against free trade? To some degree.
But I’m not sure how paying people what they are worth economically fails to send the message on obsolescence.
That’s sort of the point isn’t it? They’ve received the message and the response is to keep angrily hitting ‘snooze’ (or more aptly, they’re trying to smash the alarm clock, hoping to turn back time).
That is the problem and I don’t see much desire for a systematic set of programs that could help mitigate the issue. We do have the productivity in the nation and the resources to invest in improving the human capital of our nation. I think the best way of doing so is better health care, nutrition, and lifelong opportunities for training and education. I don’t see how you actually implement said programs without them turning into yet another set of large, inept, corrupt, government bureaucracies.
You can’t… science can’t make the distinction between better and worse. Better or worse is a moral question. Science cannot make a moral judgement, it can only test a claim about how people will answer a moral question. Regarding trends in the accessibility of quality scientific reports, I don’t feel qualified to comment. I don’t think I read any significant amount of scientific or academic papers before 2016.
Weith the smarter question, my opinion is that one won’t get smarter from mere exposure to better information. Better informed, perhaps - not smarter. If you are trying to imply that Americans today are more or less smart based on the quality of information they are exposed to, today versus in the past, I think your argument is flawed.
~Max
Would a subsidy for domestic producers who stock a national strategic reserve be considered “against free-trade”? 
~Max
Perhaps by electing representatives whose entire platform isn’t “Government doesn’t work, and if elected I will do all in my power to prevent it from getting the resources it needs to function”.
Yes, it’s an economically unnecessary price protection scheme. Essentially nothing more than a cash transfer to the disadvantaged.
And I’m actually fine doing a cash transfer to the disadvantaged. But if that’s the route we’re going, we need to be clear that this is a compassionate socialist project going to bail out the rural areas. We’re not going to pretend people are producing when they aren’t. We’re going to stop pretending the rural areas are the backbone that supports urban areas, rather than the other way around. We’re going to stop ignoring the fact that rural poverty is proof of the utter failure of extractive capitalism.
Just because things are a commodity doesn’t mean that those things aren’t necessary. Look at water as an example. It’s pretty cheap where I live. However, it would suck not having it.
A lot of government is wasteful, inefficient, and corrupt. If we had mechanisms in place that could fix that I’m sure you wouldn’t have so much criticism of the most powerful institution on the planet.
Would you enjoy paying higher water prices to stock a national strategic water reserve? That’s what I was referring to as unnecessary, as per the proposal of Max_S.
I prefer prices to reflect the actual scarcity of the commodity, unless there’s a need to mitigate some negative externality that comes from producing it.
A lot of private enterprise is wasteful, inefficient, and corrupt, too. And when it isn’t wasteful, inefficient, or corrupt it does what it is supposed to (maximize profits for the owners of the enterprise, regardless of the public interest).
If you’re gonna claim that government is INHERENTLY MORE CORRUPT, WASTEFUL, AND INEFFICIENT that private enterprise, you should prove it.
I think certain material does need to be maintained at certain levels to deal with shortages from war, natural disaster, pandemic, etc. I don’t have a problem with paying money or even mandatory national service for useful stockpiles.
COVID-19 ought to be a real eye-opener of the danger of not maintaining strategic productivity. The next pandemic may be far, far worse.
I have no obligation to prove anything to anyone. However, this is a good place to start. The Inherent Inefficiency of Government Bureaucracy - Foundation for Economic Education
The difference between the inefficiencies between government and business is that business can and does go bankrupt. Business has an incentive to get rid of their deadweight. In government? Deadweight is passed from unlucky department to an unluckier department.
Again I’d ask, would you like to pay higher water rates for a national critical stockpile of water, for no better reason than the producers of water are having a hard time making ends meet? And they don’t want to get out of that business?
This is a bit of a motte-and-bailey argument. Of course stockpiling can be a useful tool, contingent on the scarcity of the resource, contingent on how much we’re stockpiling, contingent upon how much it impacts the rest of the economy.
But should we stockpile soybeans to safeguard against price shocks? mayyyyyyybe, within reason. How about to drive up prices because the farming industry is destitute and people don’t want to change jobs? Nah.
No, you have no obligation to prove anything, but I have no obligation to take you or your libertarian think tank seriously.
How’d the trends described in your article carry on since 1977?
And the article seems to recommend that the police be privatized, which is entirely laughable.
I agree that if your goal is to maximize wealth at the top, we should privatize as much as possible and deregulate as much as possible. That sounds like a shitty society to live in, though; no thanks.
This may surprise you, but rocket scientists make up a small minority of the set of all jobs.
My suggestion is simply that most people have the intellectual potential to learn most jobs. Whether their education has been up to scratch is another matter.
I’m mocking your point of view. You are suggesting that there are large swathes of the population incapable of learning economically useful skills, and that therefore we need to have sweatshop-like jobs in the US.