How many hours would you ideally have people work in order to make more things? We could all work 100 hour weeks and in theory have more than twice as many things? Or do we have the balance perfect now?
How many hours would you ideally have people work in order to make more things? We could all work 100 hour weeks and in theory have more than twice as many things? Or do we have the balance perfect now?
It would be silly to think that we have the balance perfect. My point, and I believe Brett's point, is that we should be aware of the consequences of our choices when making big policy decisions.
More specifically with this case, we should be aware that if we all have more money, but there are no new Things, then nobody is actually helped by the program. Cash money is a piece of paper with almost no utility, so having more of them doesn't serve any actual purpose. If we all have more money, but there are *less* Things, then we are all worse off than we are now. You may think that's a good thing because you think we work too hard already, but politically it's a disaster as people are promised more financial freedom and end up with more poverty.
I'm not an economist, but that outcome doesn't seem likely to me? If prices rise because people are working less, then people will work more so they can afford the new prices, putting us back where we started (with inflation).
Meanwhile there's so many other effects on the economy that make it hard to predict how it would play out (and which weren't tested in this study):
- it eliminates the need for a minimum wage, opening up new types of employment
- it gives workers more bargaining power
- makes it easier to have children, who will grow up to contribute to the economy
- allows people to take risks in their careers
- allows people to spend time on things that they value, but which money doesn't buy
There being less Things doesn't mean that everyone is worse off: obviously those at the bottom of the ladder are going to be better off as long as there isn't a huge reduction in overall production, and that is very important since I consider it a fundamental principle that we should above all focus on improving the lot of the worse-off all else being equal, and moreover it's important to recognize that those that are badly off are by and large not doing so by choice but due to disability (whether a physical ailment or a psychic ailment or low intelligence); and even if what you meant by everybody being worse off was the aggregate being worse off, that doesn't necessarily hold either, because there is a roughly logarithmic relation between money (and Things that money can buy) and utility in an individual, such that a given marginal sum of money/Things yields much more utility to a poor person than to a rich one, such that with a more equal distribution of money/Things a society could actually have more total utility despite having less Things.
How many hours would you ideally have people work in order to make more things? We could all work 100 hour weeks and in theory have more than twice as many things? Or do we have the balance perfect now?
It would be silly to think that we have the balance perfect. My point, and I believe Brett's point, is that we should be aware of the consequences of our choices when making big policy decisions.
More specifically with this case, we should be aware that if we all have more money, but there are no new Things, then nobody is actually helped by the program. Cash money is a piece of paper with almost no utility, so having more of them doesn't serve any actual purpose. If we all have more money, but there are *less* Things, then we are all worse off than we are now. You may think that's a good thing because you think we work too hard already, but politically it's a disaster as people are promised more financial freedom and end up with more poverty.
I'm not an economist, but that outcome doesn't seem likely to me? If prices rise because people are working less, then people will work more so they can afford the new prices, putting us back where we started (with inflation).
Meanwhile there's so many other effects on the economy that make it hard to predict how it would play out (and which weren't tested in this study):
- it eliminates the need for a minimum wage, opening up new types of employment
- it gives workers more bargaining power
- makes it easier to have children, who will grow up to contribute to the economy
- allows people to take risks in their careers
- allows people to spend time on things that they value, but which money doesn't buy
- etc
There being less Things doesn't mean that everyone is worse off: obviously those at the bottom of the ladder are going to be better off as long as there isn't a huge reduction in overall production, and that is very important since I consider it a fundamental principle that we should above all focus on improving the lot of the worse-off all else being equal, and moreover it's important to recognize that those that are badly off are by and large not doing so by choice but due to disability (whether a physical ailment or a psychic ailment or low intelligence); and even if what you meant by everybody being worse off was the aggregate being worse off, that doesn't necessarily hold either, because there is a roughly logarithmic relation between money (and Things that money can buy) and utility in an individual, such that a given marginal sum of money/Things yields much more utility to a poor person than to a rich one, such that with a more equal distribution of money/Things a society could actually have more total utility despite having less Things.