The problem is there is a multiplier affect from technology today that causes unemployment. The average IQ required to be economically relevant is increasing each year.
Do you have any alternatives to what we seem to be doing at the moment? Namely, propping those individuals up from life-failure by state aide programs funded by people that are able to sustain themselves and supposedly others.
I would say that this is actually a good solution. It's lopsided today since we don't officially acknowledge that this is what we're doing, but if the trend continues, you and I will also eventually be hit by this development (unless we're exceedingly lucky).
Global wealth tax on large personal fortunes (say, 0.2-1.0% per annum of fortunes greater than $2MM) and even redistribution to everyone will make the solution more transparent and fair.
Well, one, being Harvard educated does not necessarily mean you are really a brainiac. Above the curve certainly, but you still have deviations from the mean in both directions.
And no, even if everyone were a genius, there are limited funds allocated by geniuses to pay geniuses to be geniuses. But if everyone were brilliant and have complete information and comprehensive educations about everything, either we are already in post-scarcity singularity utopia or we are imminently going to get there because you have hundreds of millions of geniuses capable to work on it, and geniuses running the system capable of realizing that potential and working to make it happen.
So either you are in a state where employment no longer matters, or your geniuses are smart enough to devote all their overflow resources to getting there, since they are all geniuses, they can all contribute to that end goal.
We simultaneously have people who just do not have the skills or mental capabilities to contribute, and leadership that is too ignorant or selfish to acknowledge the benefits of investing in research and science, and thus neither is possible.
Yes, but in my hypothetical scenario everyone is both very intelligent and very educated. The problem is, whoops, we still unglamorous work to be done and there still aren't enough cushy jobs for everyone.
Supply and demand. If no one wants to do a job, that employer will need to offer more, raising the demand, since supply is low.
It makes perfect sense that you don't know this since you seem completely misinformed about capitalism, judging by what you've said here in other replies:
> "The whole foundation of capitalism is growth"
The foundation of capitalism is savings, which is something current mainstream Economics thinks is evil (it only recognizes investment and consumption as good things to do with money, and saving is bad for Keynesians because they think if you know the price of food will be cheaper tomorrow, you won't eat today).
> "Yeah, [ever increasing consumption and resources being finite are] the inherent contradiction of capitalism"
Capitalism needs resources to be scarce in order to be a coherent system. Communists are the ones to whom resources being finite (and hence creating the need for a system of allocation of those resources, namely the price system in Capitalism) is a contradiction, which is why it never works (without price there's no way to know where to allocate resources).
The problem is that certain jobs create scenarios with imperfect information. The society of rational actors is a useful model, but so is a war of all against all.
Smart people aren't immune to principal-agent problems. The 2008 crisis was created by exactly the smart people we're trying to be. We shouldn't stop trying, but neither should we be deluded that that is sufficient.
Nobody wants to be a garbage man now either, but if the choices are that or complete destitution it starts to look better. I'm sure you did well in freshman econ, though.
