Given "spending is irrelevant"/fiat money, why not give every poor person 30K?

[Benko]

OK for all of you who say the US has fiat money, and Omama/we can spend all we like, why not give every poor person 30K (or pick some number)?

I presume there is some reason why this is not feasable, so explain to me why we can keep spending more and more and there is no problem, but what I suggested is not.  Where is the line and how are you drawing it?

[melveyr]

Well if you give every poor person 30K, your problem is that every poor person now has 30K. Their dollars are going to compete with yours when you go to the supermarket. You are less relatively wealthy than you were before. If you are a bondholder this one time cash injection will cause a jump in the CPI giving you a lower real return.

Now with drawing the line, I am unsure if you are constricting the discussion to helping the poor or broader government deficits. Assuming the latter, government deficits can be destructive if the economy is operating close to full employment (for both labor or physical capital). When the economy is operating at full employment, the governments spending starts competing with private spending. This is the only time it is appropriate to use metaphors of government "taking."

Think about the economy as like an auction. Right now we have skilled workers, and the market is not even making a bid for them. Inflation only gets bad when people are having a bidding war for resources. We are so far away from that. Right now, increased demand would lead to increased production.

Benko, as modern people I think we think too abstractly. Money is something that we created. It is merely a social construct that gives power to some and it is used to orchestrate the movement of real goods and services. Realizing that we have an unlimited amount of this social construct isn't that shocking. What is limited is the real goods and services that we buy with that money. Sometimes having more of the social construct around helps us orchestrate the movement of real goods and services in an efficient manner, and sometimes it doesn't. I think looking at what we are producing relative to our capacity is the first place to look.

Just think about crazy it is that 8% of the people who want to be productive, but aren't allowed a chance. That is a gross inefficiency and it is purely a monetary phenomenon. The very idea of cyclical unemployment doesn't make sense outside of a monetary economy.

The real takeaway is to not conflate money with the things that money buys (wealth). You can think of the two interchangably for our microeconomics, but not for macro.

[moda0306]

Well if you give every poor person 30K, your problem is that every poor person now has 30K. Their dollars are going to compete with yours when you go to the supermarket. You are less relatively wealthy than you were before. If you are a bondholder this one time cash injection will cause a jump in the CPI giving you a lower real return.

Now with drawing the line, I am unsure if you are constricting the discussion to helping the poor or broader government deficits. Assuming the latter, government deficits can be destructive if the economy is operating close to full employment (for both labor or physical capital). When the economy is operating at full employment, the governments spending starts competing with private spending. This is the only time it is appropriate to use metaphors of government "taking."

Think about the economy as like an auction. Right now we have skilled workers, and the market is not even making a bid for them. Inflation only gets bad when people are having a bidding war for resources. We are so far away from that. Right now, increased demand would lead to increased production.

Benko, as modern people I think we think too abstractly. Money is something that we created. It is merely a social construct that gives power to some and it is used to orchestrate the movement of real goods and services. Realizing that we have an unlimited amount of this social construct isn't that shocking. What is limited is the real goods and services that we buy with that money. Sometimes having more of the social construct around helps us orchestrate the movement of real goods and services in an efficient manner, and sometimes it doesn't. I think looking at what we are producing relative to our capacity is the first place to look.

Just think about crazy it is that 8% of the people who want to be productive, but aren't allowed a chance. That is a gross inefficiency and it is purely a monetary phenomenon. The very idea of cyclical unemployment doesn't make sense outside of a monetary economy.

The real takeaway is to not conflate money with the things that money buys (wealth). You can think of the two interchangably for our microeconomics, but not for macro.

+1

Unemployment being a mainly monetary phenomenon was one of those epiphany moments for me.

[Xan]

Would you consider the effect of the minimum wage, mandated benefits (health care, particularly), and red tape to be monetary issues?  Because I think those are huge reasons that the 8% can't find work, and are 100% the result of government.

[doodle]

Just an idea, but maybe the 8 percent cant find work because we dont really need them to work. We are so productive as a society and we have mechanized so many jobs that we can achieve an incredibly high standard of living for 100% of the population by only employing 90% of the work force. There is also the additional issue that maybe our earths ecosystems and stores of resources cant support 100% percent of the people working at the very high level of productivity that they do. One lumberjack today is capable of felling more trees in a couple of hours than a team of lumberjacks could have done in a week just a 100 years ago.

[melveyr]

Just an idea, but maybe the 8 percent cant find work because we dont really need them to work. We are so productive as a society and we have mechanized so many jobs that we can achieve an incredibly high standard of living for 100% of the population by only employing 90% of the work force. There is also the additional issue that maybe our earths ecosystems and stores of resources cant support 100% percent of the people working at the very high level of productivity that they do. One lumberjack today is capable of felling more trees in a couple of hours than a team of lumberjacks could have done in a week just a 100 years ago.

With the view you just laid out the great recession coinciding with increased unemployment would have to be seen as a grand coincidence. Also, why would the unemployment from progress start now? Why didn't it start in the bronze age, or the enlightenment? Did we have an amazing productivity boom that all occurred in the span of a couple years?

I think it is more realistic to think that a huge contraction in credit acted as a drain on aggregate demand that pushed our economy into a state of producing well below our physical means.

Xan brought up minimum wages. This law wouldn't explain why highly skilled workers cannot find work. It is not only the low end jobs that shrank, but jobs across the wage spectrum. Besides, saying that if only we could pay people $4 an hour is rather strange way of solving unemployment. You may have met the definition of "employing" people but does that make it a healthy economy? Regulations are a definite cost for business, but business hire when they have demand for the products. You could remove all of the regulations but if people are not in the shops buying, the firm won't hire. Similarly if increased regulations coincided with shops overflowing with customers, than firms would surely hire more. Sales are a more important driver than one of the costs of doing business (regulations).

[MediumTex]

OK for all of you who say the US has fiat money, and Omama/we can spend all we like, why not give every poor person 30K (or pick some number)?

I presume there is some reason why this is not feasable, so explain to me why we can keep spending more and more and there is no problem, but what I suggested is not.  Where is the line and how are you drawing it?

Well, we know that $500 checks mailed to everyone isn't inflationary because we already did that a few years ago.

My personal opinion is that if everyone got checks of about $5,000 or more it would result in a small and transitory uptick in inflation.

[Ad Orientem]

Setting aside legal questions for the moment...

Spending may or may not be irrelevant. Printing money and then forcing it into circulation is inflationary. Of course there may be factors that will offset that. For instance if the money being printed and then handed to ordinary people is not a large amount it would likely have little effect. The $500 - $1000 stimulus checks were not big enough to register more than a blip in the velocity of money in circulation. Additionally when one considers the amount of wealth destroyed during the financial crisis it would not do much to plug the hole in the money supply. But $30,000 per person is in a different league.

That's a years wages for a lower middle class or upper end working class man/woman. The effects would be enormous and almost certainly hugely inflationary.

[Gumby]

OK for all of you who say the US has fiat money, and Omama/we can spend all we like, why not give every poor person 30K (or pick some number)?

I presume there is some reason why this is not feasable, so explain to me why we can keep spending more and more and there is no problem, but what I suggested is not.  Where is the line and how are you drawing it?

Well, we know that $500 checks mailed to everyone isn't inflationary because we already did that a few years ago.

My personal opinion is that if everyone got checks of about $5,000 or more it would result in a small and transitory uptick in inflation.

Also depends on when the checks are mailed. For instance, during a balance sheet recession, $500 checks are mostly used to pay down private credit. Sending out $5,000 checks to everyone during a period of prosperity would just increase people's disposable income and be inflationary.

Benko, every government monetary system — even a commodity-bsed monetary system — uses some kind of buffer stock policy to determine how much money it issues, be it: gold, foreign exchange, unemployment, employment (i.e. job guarantee), wheat, whatever.

The buffer stock policy for a free-floating fiat monetary system tends to be driven by the state of the economy — via economic data sets (such as employment figures). Using employment is just one way to determine how much money should be printed. But, it's not the only data set a government might use. So, now you know why the Fed publishes all that economic data on FRED!

[melveyr]

Xan brought up minimum wages. This law wouldn't explain why highly skilled workers cannot find work. It is not only the low end jobs that shrank, but jobs across the wage spectrum. Besides, saying that if only we could pay people $4 an hour is rather strange way of solving unemployment. You may have met the definition of "employing" people but does that make it a healthy economy? Regulations are a definite cost for business, but business hire when they have demand for the products. You could remove all of the regulations but if people are not in the shops buying, the firm won't hire. Similarly if increased regulations coincided with shops overflowing with customers, than firms would surely hire more. Sales are a more important driver than one of the costs of doing business (regulations).

Actually, the low-skill segment was hit the hardest.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/ ... ardest-hit

I don't disagree with that low wage workers got hit harder, but all segments were hit.

The minimum wage story doesn't explain all of our unemployment issues, and I worry that overly emphasizing it drowns out the elephant in the room: cycles in private credit that endogenously destabilize the economy.

[RuralEngineer]

Isn't there another side to the minimum wage argument?  Getting that extra 8% working (or more than 15% if you want to use real numbers) would also increase the productivity of our economy.  Businesses would be able to expand because they can stretch their capital further.  A hot job market fueled by high growth is a much better way to grow wages than government edict. 

Minimum wage has resulted in a less dynamic economy with higher unemployment.  Obamacare further increases mandated spending per employee forced onto business and will have the same effect.  My company has very good health care for it's salaried and management employees already, and insures 100% of them (over 110,000 people).  And yet Obamacare is going to cut $100 million from their budget annually due to increased costs.  That could fund several new product development projects annually.  Less productivity, more waste.

[rickb]

My company has very good health care for it's salaried and management employees already, and insures 100% of them (over 110,000 people).  And yet Obamacare is going to cut $100 million from their budget annually due to increased costs. 

Please explain.  If your company provides "very good health care" for all its employees, it seems like Obamacare should have no adverse effect.  Are you saying your company has other employees, beyond its 110,000 "salaried and management employees", for whom it does not currently provide "very good health care" and that providing health care for these employees as mandated by Obamacare will cost $100M/year?

How many people is this?  What do they do now for healthcare?

And, who pays for it?

[RuralEngineer]

Please explain.  If your company provides "very good health care" for all its employees, it seems like Obamacare should have no adverse effect.  Are you saying your company has other employees, beyond its 110,000 "salaried and management employees", for whom it does not currently provide "very good health care" and that providing health care for these employees as mandated by Obamacare will cost $100M/year?

How many people is this?  What do they do now for healthcare?

And, who pays for it?

I'm afraid I can't give you the exact details as I, like Congress, haven't had time to read all 2000+ pages of Obamacare to see what the new liabilities are.  My understanding is that the changes likely have to deal with changes in required coverage.  There are also new taxes and fees that employers are responsible for as a result of the bill.  I'll have to plead ignorance about the specifics, but there is a wide array of new costs being imposed on employers, even if they already provide health care. 

I do know that my Company provides what I consider to be very good health care to all of its employees that I'm aware of (union personnel have their own coverage but all non-union hourly and salaried personnel share coverage).  They do employee quite a few contract personnel, but they aren't liable for their health care anyway, so it doesn't apply.  Our health care has premiums, an annual out of pocket maximum and the remainder of the cost is picked up by the company.  Off the top of my head, my plan has around $120/month premium, a $500 deductible, and a $2,500 per person out of pocket max (for me and my wife).  I also pay nothing for most medications and a max of $100 for things like cancer medication.  There is both a higher and lower plan with different premium/deductible/MOOP.  I picked the middle one.

I do know for a fact that just before Obamacare was signed into law, my company released the news that it would increase annual costs by $100 million.  This caused the Democrats to call our CEO to testify before Congress about this obviously prejudicial news release.  After they were informed that my company was legally obligated to release this information to shareholders, the hearing was miraculously canceled.

[doodle]

Isn't there another side to the minimum wage argument?  Getting that extra 8% working (or more than 15% if you want to use real numbers) would also increase the productivity of our economy.  Businesses would be able to expand because they can stretch their capital further.  A hot job market fueled by high growth is a much better way to grow wages than government edict. 

Back to my point from an earlier post...there are natural limits (resource, environmental, human needs) to economic expansion. If 50% of the population is capable of producing more than enough for everyone and more than our environment can sustainably handle, then without cutting the number of hours that people work, there is no way to achieve full employment.

There is a point where economic expansion must stop. There are only so many goods and services that humans can consume....I mean we could conceivably farm out daily life functions like brushing our teeth or wiping our asses to the service sector but even that has an end.

The bigger question is what does capitalism look like in a steady state economy...one that isn't dependent on the impossible notion of 5% compound annual growth?

[Gumby]

There are only so many goods and services that humans can consume....I mean we could conceivably farm out daily life functions like brushing our teeth or wiping our asses to the service sector but even that has an end.

I get the feeling the only reason you believe that is because you've chosen an anti-consumer lifestyle. But a service doesn't have to be something physical or ridiculous like "brushing our teeth". For instance, programmers provide virtual services (such as apps, computer programs, web apps, security, etc.) and there is often a shortage of highly skilled workers in those fields. Some people provide knowledge or advice. Some people help organize or optimize people's lives. Some people go into advertising. It's not all about physical consumption. Even this forum is an example of virtual services that "nobody really needs".

Additionally, roads, bridges, tunnels, schools, parks, public transportation and general infrastructure will always need repairs, maintenance and improvement.

You may have a point that "low skilled" workers aren't really needed as much these days. There used to be a LOT of low skilled jobs 60 years ago or 100 years ago. Things like elevator operators, for instance. Hard to find those jobs these days, since most of them have been automated. But, this is what happens when a society matures. Low skilled workers need to learn new skills and society needs to make sure they have the opportunities to learn those new skills.

I think you have to have hope that our standard of living will be improved 100 or 200 years from now. Maybe it will and maybe it won't. But, if it is improved, then it makes sense to educate and employ idle people to help achieve that high standard of living. But simply throwing up our hands and saying that we don't need any more people to be productive is not how a society achieves a higher standard of living.

I'm still waiting for the day when everyone has a flying car. Maybe Elon Musk will build those flying cars one day, but he's going to have a much easier time producing those cars if the government invests in flying car technology and builds the schools to educate our children so that they have the skills to build those flying cars a few decades from now.

[doodle]

There are only so many goods and services that humans can consume....I mean we could conceivably farm out daily life functions like brushing our teeth or wiping our asses to the service sector but even that has an end.

I get the feeling the only reason you believe that is because you've chosen an anti-consumer lifestyle. But a service doesn't have to be something physical or ridiculous like "brushing our teeth". For instance, programmers provide virtual services (such as apps, computer programs, web apps, security, etc.) and there is often a shortage of highly skilled workers in those fields. Some people provide knowledge or advice. Some people help organize or optimize people's lives. Some people go into advertising. It's not all about physical consumption. Even this forum is an example of virtual services that "nobody really needs".

Gumby, are you proposing that there is no limit to economic growth? How many people really want to pay someone to "organize and optimize" their lives? At some point in time I am just paying someone else to live my life. Are you proposing a system where humans become like cogs in a machine completing one task all their lives while paying someone to do everything else for them? I just dont think that humans are made to live and work like that. I don't think that particular societal design has beneficial outcomes in terms of physical health and emotional happiness. Before you say, "well that is each individuals decision to make for themselves" I would argue that peoples thinking is overwhelmingly colored by the system that they grow up in. Thinking outside the box doesn't come naturally. This is readily apparent when one starts to look at depression and other affective disorders such as feelings of alienation that are as high in the west as they have ever been.  In my mind it is in large part because humans are letting the system dictate our lives, rather than first forming a healthy concept of what a "life" is and then creating a system to serve this.

I am saying that our system doesn't develop naturally out of free choice by individuals. Their choices are forced by the system. Look at cars for example. Many people Im sure would love to live without the expense of a car, but our system is designed to make this nearly impossible in most of America. This same analogy can be applied to all aspects of our lives where we are forced to live in a certain way because of the systems architecture. Only by stepping back and taking a look at things can you see how insane most of our behavior is. Even if someone were to do this and agree that things are insane, most people realize how difficult it would be to fight their way upstream, they just give in and go with it. Free choice is an illusion.

[Gumby]

Gumby, are you proposing that there is no limit to economic growth? How many people really want to pay someone to "organize and optimize" their lives?

You're missing the point. You think economic growth is about employing people to do stupid things. But, I'm saying that the standard of living can continue to grow for millennia.

For instance, our future standard of living might look like this one day...

[align=center][/align]

But, you're too busy thinking about how annoying it is to own a car. So, you'll be the old guy who lives on the outskirt of that futuristic city complaining about how nobody "needs" any modern amenities. The rest of society will continue to grow without you.

[Pointedstick]

doodle, I have two broad responses to your points:

1. Just because something is not infinitely sustainable, that doesn't mean there's no reason to make use of it in the present. Yes, economic growth is not infinite. And neither are the natural resources on this planet. Does that mean we should stop attempting to grow or making use of the resources around us? I don't think so. I mean, if you want to refute the infinitude of economic growth, you could easily start worrying about the sun going out, which will indeed eventually happen. Nothing is infinite! I don't think any of us are going to witness the end of economic growth during our lifetimes.

2. The existence of challenges and restrictions doesn't mean free choice is an illusion. No matter who we are or what society and era of history we were raised in, we were all born into a culture with certain norms, features, advantages, and blind spots. Does that mean that our free choice is an illusion? I would say that you are a living refutation of that idea. You speak of how it is "nearly impossible" to live without a car in America yet you do just that! How did you swim against the apparently nearly impossible tide? Was your carlessness pre-ordained rather than a result of purposeful decisions you made?

The thread that ties these responses together would my my advice to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. One doesn't have to have perfect freedom from any conceivable constraint or access to an infinite pool of growth to nonetheless be free and wealthy. Don't let the macro cloud the micro too much!

[doodle]

Gumby, are you proposing that there is no limit to economic growth? How many people really want to pay someone to "organize and optimize" their lives?

You're missing the point. You think economic growth is about employing people to do stupid things. But, I'm saying that the standard of living can continue to grow for millennia.

Is our "standard of living" currently growing? How do you define that? I think in the West, we traditionally look at figures like GDP and material wealth and think that because these are growing, our standard of living must be growing. That futuristic city is all fine and good but what if it is inhabited by creatures who feel constantly alienated by their environment....like fish out of water? What if through a series of seemingly rational decisions humans arrive in an environment that is totally antithetical to their DNA. Just like a "chose your own adventure book", one decision naturally leads you to another. The path you are on and the next decision you make is dictated by all of your previous decisions....the idea that you can just jump off that path (for the majority of society) is not possible.

I get the feeling that you are talking about speed....whereas I'm focused on velocity. What direction is this headed in? This is where philosophy needs to take over. I'm asking "why"? That fundamentally is the most human of questions.

[TripleB]

Just an idea, but maybe the 8 percent cant find work because we dont really need them to work. We are so productive as a society and we have mechanized so many jobs that we can achieve an incredibly high standard of living for 100% of the population by only employing 90% of the work force. There is also the additional issue that maybe our earths ecosystems and stores of resources cant support 100% percent of the people working at the very high level of productivity that they do. One lumberjack today is capable of felling more trees in a couple of hours than a team of lumberjacks could have done in a week just a 100 years ago.

I'm pretty sure the unemployment rate of 8% excludes people who are not actively looking for work. For example children and seniors are not part of the denominator of the unemployment calculation.

Thus, while it's certainly true we don't need 100% of people to work, the UI number is not a measure of that.

However, I don't believe all of the 8% of unemployed people are actually looking for work. Perhaps they are simply listed as looking for work because they are milking UI benefits and thus even though they don't "need" to work, they are included in the denominator because of their enrolled in handout programs.

That said, there's also a group of people that should be included in the denominator but are not because they've simply given up on looking for work even though they'd like and/or need it.

[doodle]

Gumby,

Don't you think our food system is the perfect example of technological progress gone awry? Somehow in 50 years we have gone from a system that produced healthy adults to one that has created an obesity and diabetic nightmare.

But, you're too busy thinking about how annoying it is to own a car. So, you'll be the old guy who lives on the outskirt of that futuristic city complaining about how nobody "needs" any modern amenities. The rest of society will continue to grow without you.

One thing in nature that exhibits uncontrollable and unabatable growth is cancer. That is hardly the type of growth we need. We need intelligent growth. Leaving future decisions about the best way to make this planet work for humans should not be left solely up to the profit motive. That is total insanity in my mind.

With regards to a car...explain again why this is such a positive contraption? I know the car commercials look all sexy and exciting, but everytime I'm in a car Im usually going some mundane speed in a confined lane surrounded by a bunch of other people in their shiny overpriced cage like contraptions that they have egoically attached to themselves as some sort of definition of "who they are". They are expensive, polluting, dangerous and push an urban design philosophy that leaves people detached from their communities and forced to jump into a car to accomplish the most menial of daily tasks.

[Gumby]

Is our "standard of living" currently growing? How do you define that?

See: PragCap: The Mythical Collapse In American Living Standards

I think in the West, we traditionally look at figures like GDP and material wealth and think that because these are growing, our standard of living must be growing

As the article explains, the standard of living has more to do with the ease or difficulty of obtaining the goods or services you want. If you have to work harder to obtain the goods/services you want, your standard of living is declining. If you have to work less to obtain the goods/services you want, your standard of living is improving.

A good example of our extraordinary increase in standard of living over the last 100 years is to imagine all the things we can accomplish in an hours time.  Last night at 7PM I put my laundry in the wash, I put the dishes in the dishwasher (yes ladies, I am a man who cleans dishes), ordered dinner from a local restaurant and went upstairs into my office where I did an hour of work.  At 8 PM my dinner arrived, my laundry was done, I ate dinner on a fresh clean plate and I had done an hour of work in this period.  Imagine trying to do all that 100 years ago?  How long would it take you?  Days?  Perhaps even weeks?  That is a remarkable increase in living standards.
Source: PragCap: The Mythical Collapse In American Living Standards

That futuristic city is all fine and good but what if it is inhabited by creatures who feel constantly alienated by their environment....like fish out of water?

You don't have to live their Doodle. You can still live in a cabin in the woods and wash your clothes by hand if you prefer.

I get the feeling that you are talking about speed....whereas I'm focused on velocity. What direction is this headed in? This is where philosophy needs to take over. I'm asking "why"? That fundamentally is the most human of questions.

Not sure I follow. I'm not just talking about speed of getting things done in life. I'm talking about demand for a more efficient life. For instance, if people want the freedom to travel between two points — without having to deal with the inefficiency of a winding road that makes their trip longer — they'll provide the demand for a flying car. You seem to think that there's no more demand left in our society because people don't want to hire someone else to "brush their teeth" for them. Whereas I'm saying that there will always be demand for something. Maybe it will be a flying car. Maybe it will be a pogo stick. Who cares as long as it helps improve our standard of living.

[Pointedstick]

Is our "standard of living" currently growing? How do you define that? I think in the West, we traditionally look at figures like GDP and material wealth and think that because these are growing, our standard of living must be growing. That futuristic city is all fine and good but what if it is inhabited by creatures who feel constantly alienated by their environment....like fish out of water? What if through a series of seemingly rational decisions humans arrive in an environment that is totally antithetical to their DNA. Just like a "chose your own adventure book", one decision naturally leads you to another. The path you are on and the next decision you make is dictated by all of your previous decisions....the idea that you can just jump off that path (for the majority of society) is not possible.

I get the feeling that you are talking about speed....whereas I'm focused on velocity. What direction is this headed in? This is where philosophy needs to take over. I'm asking "why"? That fundamentally is the most human of questions.

Keep in mind that you only have the leisure time to ask deep philosophical questions such as these because of the unbelievable material standard of living you're afforded. I can tell you from my experience living in a 3rd world African village that the people there don't do a lot of ruminating on the direction of technological progress. They're trying to feed and clothe themselves.

In one sense you could say they're psychologically happy because they live close to their extended families, have strong social and community ties, and live very salt-of-the-earth lives in which manual labor is always in demand, so there's no "unemployment" in the western sense of the word.

But the dark side is poor health and premature death due to malnutrition, infectious disease, and injury. Child mortality is appalling. Life expectancies are in the 40s. Women are confined to traditional roles due to the lack of labor-saving machinery. Education is practically non-existent. Lack of transportation limits commerce.

If you want to talk about food, then yes, the western approach can produce a lot of not-great food, but there sure is a lot of it. The people I lived with would have taken what we have any day of the week over their subsistence farming that was so often not productive enough to keep their children from starving.

Let's not take for granted what unbelievable societies we all have the privilege of living in. Even if social and emotional health may be harder to achieve for those of us who move around a lot, work boring jobs, and live far from family, these are all fixable problems on a micro level. If you live in that village, there is virtually no way for you as an individual to solve those problems for yourself.

[Gumby]

Don't you think our food system is the perfect example of technological progress gone awry? Somehow in 50 years we have gone from a system that produced healthy adults to one that has created an obesity and diabetic nightmare.

Yes. But you're talking about quality of life. The standard of living is more about the ease or difficulty of obtaining goods/services — whatever they are.

One thing in nature that exhibits uncontrollable and unabatable growth is cancer. That is hardly the type of growth we need. We need intelligent growth. Leaving future decisions about the best way to make this planet work for humans should not be left solely up to the profit motive. That is total insanity in my mind.

I agree. But, that doesn't mean people should be unemployed. You can still give jobs to people to help achieve the goals you're envisioning. Why not give jobs to people to clean up the planet?

With regards to a car...explain again why this is such a positive contraption? I know the car commercials look all sexy and exciting, but everytime I'm in a car Im usually going some mundane speed in a confined lane surrounded by a bunch of other people in their shiny overpriced cage like contraptions that they have egoically attached to themselves as some sort of definition of "who they are". They are expensive, polluting, dangerous and push an urban design philosophy that leaves people detached from their communities and forced to jump into a car to accomplish the most menial of daily tasks.

So? Quit complaining, get off your ass, and start providing society with a better mode of transportation!

[doodle]

Gumby.

If you have to work harder to obtain the goods/services you want, your standard of living is declining. If you have to work less to obtain the goods/services you want, your standard of living is improving.

Just off the bat, that is totally wrong headed thinking. Getting those goods and services is what makes us human. If that is the case why even have legs, arms a mouth etc. Why don't we just move around in little scooters instead of walk. We dont need mouths to chew...we can have a machine do that for us and inject the nutritition directly into us. Heck we can just hook up catheters and then we dont even have to get off the couch to go to the bathroom anymore. Oh, won't our living standard be so high then!!