Starglider wrote:Broomstick wrote:By reducing headcount you reduce the number of people making any money at all. How does that help business?
If they were on minimm wage then their salary will be replaced with a similar amount of government benefits, maintaining spending on products and services. Enrollment in food stamp, disability, medicaid and similar programs is at all-time highs in the US and still growing rapidly.
NO, US GOVERNMENT BENEFITS FOR THE UNEMPLOYED ARE
NOT SIMILAR TO MINIMUM WAGE!!!!
An able bodied adult is entitled to
food stamps ONLY! (Trust me, I speak from recent experience). That's an allowance for FOOD ONLY.
Nothing for housing.
Nothing for medical care. Not even a few dollars for soap, water, or deodorant. MOST unemployed adults are not disabled, therefore, they get JUST food stamps.
That is it.
IF you qualify for "unemployment insurance" - but no means guaranteed, vast swathes of workers do not qualify - you get approximately 2/3 of your wages, up to a certain point, after which it's a flat dollar amount.
NO, the unemployed in the US
do not have "similar" income on benefits than they did while working.
Fraudulent use of food stamps to buy non-food products is pervasive.
Oh, really? That used to be true, not so easy to do any more. Not impossible, but given that the US jobless have little income other than foodstamps, and they want to keep eating, that actually doesn't leave a hell of a lot of "disposable" foodstamp resoures to convert.
Mind you, I'm not going to turn someone in for a little chicanery to obtain the funds for soap and toothpaste, but I somehow doubt that's the level of fraud you're referring to.
I refuse to call this a tragedy of the commons because if you genuinely believe that failure to use government force to make people to work more hours than necessary is a tragedy then your moral system is completely screwed up.
The system is screwed up not because because are forced to work more hours than "necessary", but because there is no safety net for surplus workers.
Incomes can be stagnant but if everything gets cheaper (through automation) people are still better off.
Yeah, nice idea - problem is that incomes have been
falling, not stagnant.