Marshall's description of the coming problem is an interesting read, though I think he's definitely painting the worst possible picture to support his thesis.
What's more troubling to me than the problem he describes is his solution, which basically boils down to giving $25k / year to every citizen of the US from a "central fund" that we fund through:
- advertising on everything from our money to our bridges
- taxes, taxes, and more taxes. we tax everything from email to carpool lanes to "excess" salaries and profits
My favorite had to be his diatribe about executive pay:
When an executive makes $20 million per year, the money does not materialize out of thin air. It comes from consumers in the form of higher prices that they pay for everything that they purchase.
For an executive to make $20 million per year, a company has to overcharge consumers for the products they purchase from the company. It is not as though the $20 million paid to the executive appears out of thin air -- it comes from consumers in the form of higher prices. An "extreme income" tax simply takes that excess compensation and returns it back to consumers, where the money originally came from.
What an ignorant and simplistic view of our economic system. To me, this is clearly a case of the cure being much worse than the disease.
Marshall is considering an distant future economy where, essentially, only executives get paid; all low-wage jobs have been automated away.
For such an economy to function, you'd need an "extreme income tax" to redistribute wealth. Otherwise, the executives would be making ultra-cheap products that no average person could buy, because he wouldn't have a salary to afford it.
This ignores basic supply and demand, though. If no one can buy them, why would they make them? And if Company A is pricing them way too high or unfairly, what's to stop Company B from offering the same thing at a lower price point?
That's sorta the problem. No one can buy them, so nobody makes them. End result is that the economy stops functioning, nobody builds anything, and a perma-depression occurs. This can't be a good thing...
As for what stops company B from competing - it's the cost of tooling up all these automation centers and the risk that after all that, your "prey" may itself get better and nobody will buy your product. Microsoft was massively profitable for the 1990s. Google was massively profitable for the 2000s. Why did nobody compete with them? Because if they did, Microsoft/Google would crush them like a bug.
I guess Marshall would argue that if there were no wealth redistribution scheme, all the non-executives would simply die off, followed by all the executives who made stuff for them, until eventually only a micro-economy existed of executives making stuff for other executives.
I agree that Marshall is concentrating too much on one side of the economic equation, though. He ignores that people could form less efficient micro-economies rather than die off. He ignores that human desire is ever-changing and limitless, capable of out-stripping the most efficient production facility. And he ignores the fact that people have intrinsic value to other people apart from employment: to interact with, to command, to love. People will pay to keep other people alive and happy.
The Luddite fallacy has been wrong for a few centuries now. We have vastly more automation than we did a hundred years ago, yet the unemployment rate is about the same and the median standard of living is much higher.
Something could change to make it correct in the future, but I wouldn't assume that it will happen.
Once we've reached such a future, all basic necessities will be so cheap and plentiful that no one minds having the government pay for them. So I see no reason an "extreme income tax" will be necessary.
I would argue that we've already reached that point. If the government was streamlined by market processes and we ceased blowing surpluses on wars we could easily fund a safety net.
Here in the UK we spend about 30 billion squids a year on defence. About a third of that is service pensions, another third goes on the bureaucracy/long term projects and another third on the actual services themselves.
That's half what we spend on healthcare and one-fifth of what we spend on welfare. Anyone who thinks that by cutting defence spending a government can suddenly afford anything is dangerously misguided.
Here in the US, we spend at least $600 billion a year to start, plus another $30B+ on pensions, plus shitloads of black budget on intelligence. This amounts to about the entire UK budget, just on yearly budgeted defence.
None of this includes the cost of actually fighting our ridiculous wars: the cost of the Iraq shenanigans alone will be well over a Trillion dollars even if Obama pulls out this year and no more money is spent after that.
Who'll make the machines that automate? If there are a million people sitting on their haunches with nothing to do, don't you think some of them will find something constructive to build and employ the rest?
The industrial revolution massively automated practically all aspects of life. I didn't see a world wide job scarcity throughout the 20th century.
"What an ignorant and simplistic view of our economic system."
The general idea seems to have an empirical basis. Yes, his argument is oversimplified and hyperbolic, but the trend since the the dot-com bubble burst is growing corporate profits and stagnant wages. Such a trend is not indefinitely sustainable, without society breaking down.
As for the $25K, I wander how far we could get towards that if the various check writing functions of the government (food stamps, Social Security, Medi*) were replaced with a single check written to every citizen once a year.
"To eliminate an 'output gap' and substantially reduce unemployment, the government can offer an $8 per hour job to anyone willing and able to work. To execute this program, the government can first inform its existing agencies that anyone hired at $8 per hour doesn't 'count' for it's annual budget expenditures. Additionally, these agencies can advertise their need for $8 per hour employees with the local government unemployment office, where anyone willing and able to work can be dispatched to the available job openings in government or non-profit organizations.
This job will include full benefits, including health care, vacation, etc. These positions will form a national labor 'buffer stock' in the sense that it will be expected that these employees will be prone to being hired by the private sector when the economy improves. As a buffer stock program, employment will be highly countercyclical—anti inflationary in a recovery, and anti deflationary in a slowdown. Furthermore, it allows the market to determine the government deficit, which automatically sets it at a near 'neutral' level.
In addition to the direct benefits of more output from more workers, the indirect benefits of full employment should be very high as well. These include reduced crime, reduced domestic violence, reduced incarcerations, etc. In particular, teen and minority employment should increase dramatically, hopefully breaking the current employment morass."
Essentially creating a 'default job' that anyone can get, simultaneously putting a floor under wages, providing full employment, and doing away with welfare. The $8 figure was pulled out of thin air (several years ago), but the key is to create a wage that is liveable but not lucrative, so as to support workers but still encourage them to find a better paying job in the private sector when they can.
If you think this would bust the budget, consider that $8/hr full time, for 10% of the working age population works out to roughly $250-300 billion a year. Add up the cost of welfare, unemployment insurance, the occasional bailout, and loss of tax revenue during slumps due to slackening demand (due to higher unemployment), and the cost isn't as bad as you think.
What's more troubling to me than the problem he describes is his solution, which basically boils down to giving $25k / year to every citizen of the US from a "central fund" that we fund through:
- advertising on everything from our money to our bridges
- taxes, taxes, and more taxes. we tax everything from email to carpool lanes to "excess" salaries and profits
My favorite had to be his diatribe about executive pay:
When an executive makes $20 million per year, the money does not materialize out of thin air. It comes from consumers in the form of higher prices that they pay for everything that they purchase.
For an executive to make $20 million per year, a company has to overcharge consumers for the products they purchase from the company. It is not as though the $20 million paid to the executive appears out of thin air -- it comes from consumers in the form of higher prices. An "extreme income" tax simply takes that excess compensation and returns it back to consumers, where the money originally came from.
What an ignorant and simplistic view of our economic system. To me, this is clearly a case of the cure being much worse than the disease.