Political Crossfire Forums

today's income inequality is because of technological improvements splitting out the middle because those types of jobs (highish cost, but repetitive and not highly skilled) are the ones ripe for automation. so you polarize and have fantastically paid people who automate (hey, how you doing plebs?), and then the lower tier people of people who it is just to expensive to automate their job at this juncture. but don't worry, such things are just a new frontier of things for us to do.

of course, there's a fallacy of the lump of labor here (the idea that there are only X amount of jobs in the world; this is a fallacy because as technology destroys some it enriches others. see any history book for examples). why is it that the middle jobs are dissapearring? they really aren't. something like a billion jobs have been created over the last decade but almost all of them were in developing countries. you see, labor is cheap there. since you can't move burger flippers over there, service jobs are the jobs that are left over here in the short term. in the long term, those middle people who were cut out by technological progress need to find something to do. or rather, their pay is too high for what they are doing; they need to compete with machines or change their jobs.

the future will only further this dynamic in terms of polarization. only those people who have a very specific set of traits and skills -- traits meaning they didn't really learn them from college or anything like that, but they are fantastically creative, for example -- will make it to the upper echelons.

to which i ask: why is this a bad thing? this is rewarding people based on merit. this doesn't mean that the lower end will be stuck in "poverty" or anything like it. comparative poverty, but i'm comparatively poor to many people today even though i make a lot of money. the income and wealth inequality today is nothing like what your precious marx was railing against. the people at the top are new wealth, people who have made names for themselves and made fortunes. and many of these people proceed to then give it away when they are done with it. they earned it, they made contributions to society far above what a taxi driver ever did. why shouldn't they be paid fantastically well? it is justice that these people are rich, same as it is justice that other people are poor

Pretty simple imo where America (and where the west is headed in general).

There are a huge group of factors pushing down wages and cutting the demand for labor. Labor is more mobile and many jobs can be outsourced. There is a great income divide and it is growing. Those at the very bottom are either in prison or living lives where they have the basic necessities but can never do much with their lives working minimum wage or exploiting the welfare systems. Those in the middle work an absurd amount of hours for an econmically and meaningfully marginal existence. Those at the top enjoy a lifetime of pursuing their passions and desires, creating businesses, having the time for hobbies and traveling extensively.

The state will continue to support pro-globalization, pro-military, pro-bailout and pro-welfare policies until the bottom falls out in a few 100 years and we really begin to look like a feudal society.

People build machines to do most of their work, then scratch their heads and wonder why most people don't work. Oh wait, that is progress. If America ever did get out of the world policeman business, who would be a good substitute for that, and why?