Belmont Club » Heat Death: "One approach is fix the problem by making things “fair” — to reduce everything to a common economic temperature so that we all get more or less the same thing — from our net wages if we work or from the government if we don’t. From private jobs, which everybody knows are created by government incentives, or government jobs, which everybody knows are funded by taxing the private jobs.
The other approach is to allow a differential so that market forces are driven by forces that are trying to equalize, but never quite succeed. The first approach promises a kind of social tranquility at the cost of heat death. The second opens the path to creative destruction; to a world of striving, envy and ambition. Each approach has its own problems. The problem in the first case will be how to put the food on the table. The problem in the second case will widespread discontent because many people have nowhere near as nice a wide screen TV as their neighbors.
Which view you adopt partly answers the question of why have more than a million workers stopped looking for jobs. It describes the signals being sent out to the workforce and who from. What do you say to those people out in the dark? Is there a future for you? Or is there nothing for it but to look back in wonder?"
I'm wondering too...
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