Indian government to endorse Universal Basic Income

[David_TheMan]

This is yet another example where you have understood neither the argument I made nor the paper you tried to use to make your own, and as a result ended up in the wrong world completely.

Look at your own link.



In other words, almost the entire drop in labor force participation is due to mothers staying home to raise their kids (which is a GOOD thing for society) and younger people taking more time to learn before entering the workforce (which is a GOOD thing for society).

this is textbook of reading what you want out of things that disagree with your contention. As i posted from the article, welfare itself has a tendency to drive people out the workforce, the article mentions low income being driven out and of the workforce and not looking and the working credits pushing those who don't want to work to seek free money to not work in the form of disability insurance claims. You literally ignored the crux of the article to make a point about its good for mothers to stay home, when mothers staying at home and other such non factors do nothing to change my point that it kicks people out the work force. it doesn't matter if YOU think its good for a mother to not work, the fact that because of subsidy she does not work is my point, and you can't deny this so you try to move to goal post to this show how being preferable, It isn't to me. its a drain on the productive class.

What about men in their prime, the ones you most want to be working? Oh, wait, no problem:



Later on they show that some forms of social insurance can reduce desire to work among primary wageearners, but the effects are small. For example, receiving disability reduces workforce participation among those who receive it by 17%. First of all, in an overloaded labor market a small workforce disincentive is GOOD, second of all, that number is among disabled people and certainly wouldn't be as high among the able-bodied, and third, not participating in the paid workforce doesn't mean you aren't volunteering, taking care of family, or other societally useful things.

What about the men, you are creating a straw man again, it doesn't matter to me if they are men or women, the study showed the decline period because of subsidy, that the main area of effect is women, makes no difference to me. Try to actually address the argument I'm making instead of strawmen in your mind.

Looking at different demographic groups, a decline in the share of "want a job" nonparticipants can be seen among prime-age females, prime-age males and young workers. However, in terms of the number of individuals affected by the decline, the decline is mainly a prime-age female, and to a lesser extent young worker, phenomenon.

You say the effects are small that is your opinion, I'm of the opinion any free rider issue is a problem and subsidizing someone to do no work when they can perfectly work is a negative on the tax base and productive class, with no return on investment.

On top of that, again you want to fix poor economic environment by kciking people or subsidizing them out of the labor market to help a overloaded labor market that you say doesn't have enough jobs. Again to think what you are suggesting makes any economic sense is absurd, you increase the supply of unemployed while taking money from producers and you think this will not have an effect on those in the market and skrink the economy and make it even worse for those who are left in the labor market looking and for those who are in the middle class who will eat the heavy penalty of having to support the free riders. It makes no sense.

It's like you live in a libertarian-infused academic bubble. The things you say have so little to do with "reality" it's ridiculous.

First off, the greatest gains in poverty reduction in modern American history were in the 1960s, when taxes on the rich were MUCH higher than today, and in the 1990s, when taxes on the rich were raised. Meanwhile, virtually all the recessions have occurred in tax-cutting Republican administrations. Read "Unequal Democracy" and you can see how clear the trends are.

I live in reality. Ive posted why I believe in my stance and what I use to source it. You have shown me you are willing to lie with regard to an academic paper says when everyone can read it and claim it says otherwise. You've also shown a poor ability to actually argue against what I presented, you've instead shown you prefer to argue strawmen. That said I have time so I don't mind taking time to clear things up for you. ;)
The largest gains in poverty reduction didn't occur in the 1960s these might be the lowest recorded as previous to the 1940s n the US but some like Milton Freidman would argue the gilded age is actually when the US experienced one of the greatest shifts out of poverty with the per capita wage growth, economic growth, actually the late 1800s during the gilded age.
Milton posits (not a libertarian or austrian economist by the way)

Far from being a period in which the poor were being ground under the heels of the rich and exploited unmercifully, there is probably no other period in history, in this or any other country, in which the ordinary man had as large an increase in his standard of living as in the period between the Civil War and the First World War...

Real wages increased, gdp increased, per capita income increased, production increaed by the 100%s percent in efficiency with the massive industrialization. So sorry if I disagree with your contention.

Second, it is ridiculous in this day and age to think that increasing "productivity" and "markets" are goals. We have way MORE shyt than we need, and it isn't making us any more satisfied. There's a massive marketing-induced push to make us buy more than we need, replace everything with new stuff every year, drain resources from every corner of the planet to feed the machine....all the while only because capitalists say GROW GROW GROW.

We already have the capability to make all the stuff the world needs. The ONLY reason the GROW GROW GROW mantra is reproduced is because the wealthy survive off an interest-based system that they wish to remain at the top of forever despite not doing the work, and constant wealth accumulation via interest can only occur if there's constant economic growth based on your debtors' work. So you withhold money, which there is plenty of, in order to create false scarcity and make them work for your profits. It's a completely artificial system that only serves the wealthy, while abusing the poor, destroying the environment, and mortgaging the future. It's basically a giant planet-wide pyramid scheme, because it ONLY works for the wealthy if the interest payments they take from the poor continuously outpace the real wage gains of the poor.

Never said productivity is the goal. Again another strawman. markets aren't a goal, the market is nothing more than short hand term for the will of the people in a community and what they want to voluntarily spend their money on. So that you even refer to the market as a goal again tells me you don't know much when talking about economics.

You seem to now argue as if you are a god capable of telling others what they need and have too much of and what should satisfy them. You aren't a good, you speak only for yourself, if there is a market for an object people will flock to fill it, if not it will go away. that is the beauty of the market, you get success by giving people what they want.

As for being mad at growth, you claim you have a labor surplus, the ablity to fix that issue is to grow economically so that the labor can be put to use for those who want to provide it, now you claim you don't want growth. So it seems to me all you are arguing now is that people who are poor shouldn't work they should live off the people who do work and that on top of that on top of that the market supporting these people should contract because they have too much, even though their very actions now in wanting to work, wanting to get things they desire, tell use differently.

It is no wonder you favor such a terrible economic program, you have a level of aroggance with regard to people and that you believe you know how to live their life more than they do, with a very real ignorance of basic economics and the effect your incentives will produce on those you seek to exploit the most.

Third, of course technology is responsible for lack of labor demand. That's not Luddite, that should be a GOOD thing. Hunter gatherers and agricultural societies never have serious labor shortages, because everyone only needs to do enough work to support themselves and the rest is leisure. It's only when you use capital accumulation to take away the ability of the average man to support himself, then technology to replace the labor you would need from him, that a labor shortage develops.

A combine does the work of 100 men. A semi truck does the work of 100 men. A computer does the work of 100 men. How will that not create less need for labor? The ONLY way you avoid that is if you create new needs, new products for people to lust after...and while in some cases those might be good things, if the process keeps going on for decades and decades, eventually the new demands will become more and more artificial. Now we pay enormous amounts of money for bottled water, pre-cooked food, childcare, children's games, home entertainment, diet programs, exercise....all stuff that used to be FREE in our parent's generation. But we have to keep expanding market reach more and more until we monetize everything, to feed the useless pyramid scheme.

Of course, the other alternative is to do less market-based work. Stop making useless stuff and paying for stuff we used to do ourselves, only work 15-20 hours a week and spend the rest of the time with family and volunteer work and pursuing self-improvement. We'd be a LOT happier. But the interest-class wouldn't be as dominant off our labor.

Technological innovation has been pushing need in manual labor and agriculture down for 100+ years, yet jobs and industries have been starting up with no problem. Service sector jobs, financial jobs, entertainment, all these industries support more people than the agriculture and manufacturing ever did and you still stick to the luddite argument that technology actually hurts the job market. Its simply proven false. All technology does is increase efficiency, which allows labor to flow into other markets that need it. No different than a backhoe allowing more digging efficiency which does what, causes a need for backhoe operators, metal fabricators, programmers for the backhow, fuel needs, rubber manufacturer for tires, and etc. You ignore that because you don't see 100 men digging in a ditch, but you have 500 more people involved in extremely specialized industry that now have jobs that didn't exist or weren't neccessary before.

You say we pay, no people choose to pay for bottled water, which gives jobs to people who work in the plastic factories, the people who work in the wataer factories, the people who drive the trucks that deliver the water, the stores that sell the water, all to people who choose to have bottled water because of their disposable income. You reject an increased economy that caters to the needs of those in a society because it simply doens't fit your need for what people need and its very silly in my opinion, especially wen your solution is to increase the tax burden on those who work and pay taxes as an alternative.

 

[David_TheMan]

You use Heritage as a source. Literally everything that comes from them is propaganda. Their only reason to exist is propaganda.

Yes, there are broken systems in India.

However, the biggest issues are in the sustainability of the tribal peoples and villagers who comprise 70% of India's population. Do you really want to move all those people to the slums in the cities to find the type of work you are talking about? Check the happiness and satisfaction of a poor person in the village versus a poor person in the city and get back to me.

Yes I use Heritage as a source, saying something is a propaganda isn't an actual argument. You don't seem to be able to refute the economic restrictions and regulations that they document, so it seems even you know there is no argument on that level.

Heritage nor I have argued that people should be moved anywhere you literally have created another strawman.

I think the person's happiness should guide them, I'm not the one arguing that my own personal valuation should be greater than another individual, like yourself when you seemed to make a post angry that a person's life ambition was to be a taxi cab driver. People should be free to do whatever makes them happy in life and pursue it, as long as it doesn't involve the violation and aggression of another person.

Your claim "humans want to get as much for as little work as they can get away with" is probably the single worst assumption of your entire economic school.

Its not a terrible assumption its an inherrent fact of life. People are not going to labor hard for something that doesn't benefit them. They aren't going to work more hours for diminishing returns. They will quickly find the perfect maximization for their work effort and reward depending on their personal values. This is a very simply and innate concept of all rational actors, I don't know why this bothers you so much. Is it work, maybe effort would have been better for you?

How is the majority of the internet reliant on free labor at either the software or content level?

Why is there so much open-source software around?

Why do billions of people worldwide do volunteer work every year?

Why do mothers and fathers go so far above the call of duty to raise their children right?

Why do so many people take good care of their elderly parents?

Why do so many artists and musicians and writers do what they love for nothing or almost nothing?

Why do so many amateur athletes work so hard to improve their craft even when they know they'll never see a real payday?

Why do so many people hunt, fish, grow gardens and trees, run churches, run boy scout troops, and do other "work-like" things in their free time?

Why do rich people who are already set for life keep working?

Why do lottery winners almost always go back to work within a year or two?

People do what they want to do for all those situations, they also calculate the cost and payoff for doing those things rather than alternatives.

In fact, trying to tie it all to money actually disincentives work. It's a long-proven psychological fact that providing a reward for a task focuses the gain on the reward, and disincentives the task itself. Scientific studies have shown that the ONLY tasks for which financial reward is effective in improving actual performance are in rote, mindless, easy tasks.

I didn't tie money to work though, I didn't even say money in the line you quoted. I said people want as much as they can get for as little. That applies to money, it also applies to time, mental energy, and etc. So looks like you literally presented yet another strawman.

Take away the total reliance of finance, and you'll have MORE moms staying home to take better care of their kids, MORE families taking in their elderly parents and devoting more time to them, MORE artists and writers and musicians devoting time to their craft, MORE farmers working their family's land, MORE activists fighting for rights and restoring ecosystems. The only thing you'll have less of is mindless machine-like workers doing the mindless work of constant production. And that's the exact work we don't need, partially because machines can do it, and partially because we already produce far too much useless and redundant stuff.

You arguing more of your strawman.

Volunteers volunteer because they have the financial ability to do so, so give more people the financial ability to do so and you'll get more volunteers. Can you even read what you're saying - you just made my argument for me!

Give someone financial ability to do so and they will volunteer?
Then they aren't vollunteering, they are getting paid to do something.
SMH
So you want to take money from workers to give to people who do nothing so they can "volunteer" instead of say allowing them to use their effort and physical ability to actually take care of themselves. That makes no economic sense. If you have physical ability to "volunteer" you have physcial ability to work and provide for yourself, why should others who are actually productive have their wealth confiscated so another can do what they want and live a life of leisure volunteering for to do things that interest them? don't you see how this would make a person who is actually productive, not want to remain working?

And again, if the ONLY reason for a worker to incur additional hours is for financial benefit, they'll be a crap worker. Again, THAT is scientifically proved, but that seems to be the kind of science you ignore. I don't want people doing crap tasks for meagre financial rewards anymore, and there's nothing in this globe that needs it except the interest-earning class and the marketers/advertisers who rely on us making and buying stuff we don't need.

Well its your opinion they will be a crap worker I disagree, and it can't be scientifically proven what a person's preference is because every individual is different. So it seems you don't know about using science with regard to human valuation. I don't care what a person does to feed themselves and their family that is their choice based on their marketable skill. Again we have you totalitarian impulses coming to light and thinking your want equates with an economic argument about why something should be done. It doesn't, but economically telling that person don't work so you can volunteer some place on the dime of people who actually do work, will lead to an unsustainable entitlement.

No incentive to better oneself? You think the incentive to better oneself comes from capitalism?

No and I have not argued that it does either. Incentive to better ones self is innate.
What I did say though is a UBI or negative income tax does incentivize people to not better themselves, provide for themselves, and discourages those for are being productive but say marginally so compared to someone who has nothing, it discourages them from continuing to do so.

Yeah, tell every housewife in history, "You had no incentive to better yourself, because you knew it wouldn't improve your earning potential, so you're basically a useless human being."

If I argued people were useless human being you might have a point. I haven't in the slightest. Another strawman from you.
Last time I checked women choose to be housewives in my society, they know they sacrifice their economic earning potential in doing so and that is a sacrifice or choice they make. Their family carries the financial weight of the action and that is all fine with me.

People have their own natural incentive to better themselves. The vast majority of the world's population is either not working, retired, or in a job that ain't ever going to change no matter how they better themselves...and yet they still find the urge to better themselves. It's human nature to want to be a better person. The global focus on profit motive helps to destroy that nature. Move to UBI, and the urge to better oneself will soon become GREATER, not lesser, because it will be pulled away from profit focus.

Yes people do, didn't say otherwise.
Well I would assume if you don't factor in age of workers, the majority of the world would be unemployed, what that has to do with what I've argued you've yet to make a connection.
Its human nature to want to be a better person? I disagree depends on the person.
Profit motive destroys a nature that is simply a blind assumption by you, that isn't a good argument at all, you can't even prove your view on human nature is even a fact.
Move to a UBI tax the productive class so that the poor and jobless can volunteer doing things they want, fight to decrease economies by limiting all the goods and service provided and you think this will pull you to prosperity. That is a contention ignorant of economic realities, it would lead to more hunger, worse living condition, and less goods and services. It would collapse on itself and because of the lost workers it would take more time and claim more lives until the market was able to reallocate to serve the populace properly.

 

[the cac mamba]

No one noted that the name of the professor is "Guy Standing".

This may be an easier way to have a safety net for people. Id be open to the idea if it was implemented right and would gladly accept the money. Question is: how much? 10k? Can't live off that.

it shouldnt be to live off, it should be a supplement

 

[Professor Emeritus]

If there is a labor surplus then you act in ways to engage the surplus, not try to milk those who have stored or earned wealth.

So are you going to "engage" them by paying them to take good care of their children, their elderly, run their farms, restore the environment, volunteer, etc.?

Or by "engage the labor surplus", are you simply referring to continuing to monetizing things like water and childcare and cooking which never should have been monetized, or creating greater and greater artificial demand for more and more "stuff" that actually leads to no greater happiness or satisfaction in society at all while wrecking natural resources?


It basically comes down to two questions. The first is whether you're going to pay people to do useful stuff or useless stuff. Virtually all of the labor surplus is currently engaged in useless stuff - either doing menial jobs for the rich that they could do themselves, doing machine-like jobs on assembly lines that machines could do, or making excessive products that no one actually needs. So you've already lost there. The second question is whether you're going to determine for the people what is useful (pay them to do all the things I described above), or let them decide for themselves (UBI). The UBI is all about individualism and freedom, so I assume you'd rather that one.

We get it no one wants to barely survive, its easier to live off confiscated goods of others. We know that. We also know that subsidization of an activity leads to more of that activity. You want less productivity and more labor surplus, institute a UBI and watch how it absolutely wrecks your economy. The people will be forming food lines off this.

Yeah, but you seem to be really confused about who is living off of who.

1% of the world has 40% of the wealth. Per-person, they're earning literally thousands of times more than the people at the bottom. Is it because they're working thousands of times harder? Are they thousands of times better people? No, they in large part were simply born into the right situation to take advantage of the situation of those on the bottom, so they were able to profit off their labor. Again, the very nature of an interest-based economy is that those who owe debts will have to continuously pay MORE back to those who gave them loans, so money is constantly flowing from the laborer to the investor. And in a shareholder economy, those who actually do the work find the benefits of their work constantly flowing to those who want to profit off the mere fact that they own money.

Living off the confiscated goods of others indeed.

So what good for him.

You know, fukk you, that's a good friend of mine and his life is hard as hell because of the kind of shyt you cape for, and all you can say is "good for him".

I'd love to see you in his shoes ages 10-16 and see if you could still spout this same bullshyt.

It's a basic principle of ethical philosophy that any view is corrupt unless you would be willing to support it without knowing ahead of time where in society you are going to be born. Yet you support a philosophy that provides giant benefits for those born into wealth and let's you say "so what" for those born into poverty.

Good for them, its their life to live, not yours.

Again, in that very quote, you're failing the basic premises of ethical philosophy again.

society doesn't build a tractor. a company of men or a person builds a tractor. Its used for the benefit of a property owner, it increases that person's efficiency and hopefully pays for itself in the long run. It isn't a free lunch, its capital investment and it has a return. So even equating that to a free lunch shows a fundamental ignorance of basic economics.

So why didn't those men build that tractor in the 1300s?

It was a gigantic, lengthy process spanning hundreds of years that led to that company building the tractor today. They relied on all sorts of work and labor advances that they had nothing to do with. The labor-saving technology of the present is the fruit of a long societal process. It's not solely due to the efforts of that one company that happened to have the capital in the right time and place, and there's no reason they alone should benefit from the labor-saving advances of society.

And this so called "capital investment" is as close as it gets to a free lunch, especially when you see where most of that capital originated. You should thank God every day that you get to cape for an economic philosophy written entirely by people who wanted to justify what they already had.

You want better life, open of trade and remove barriers, this will drive the cost of goods down and lower the cost for the standard of living. This lowered cost allows more disposable income, disposable income allows for capital investment and/or more retail opportunity which enlarges consumer market and creates more jobs, which feeds into itself in creating higher efficiency, driving the cost of goods down, and feeding into itself lifting all of society up, instead of killing all economic growth with a UBI, and driving people out of the labor force and disincentivizing them from ever even getting in.

So why are Americans less happy now, with more free trade than ever, than they were in the 1960s when they had far less stuff?

Why are the urban poor in Asia far less satisfied than the rural poor?

Why do factory workers and everyone else in mechanized lines of production hate their jobs so much?

Where does all this constant growth come form, if you're not constantly destroying the environment and/or constantly monetizing things that didn't used to be monetized?

When will you deal with the fact that the monetization of things has been proven to cause LOWER quality and LESS satisfaction?

Society isn't a person, body, or corporation. Its just a term we used for grouping, it is incorporeal. In being incorporeal it has no ability to "own", "develop", or "be owed" anything. Individuals or groups of individuals of society do have the ability to develop, create, break, own, or be in debt. It is those individuals who reap the benefit of labor saving devices and the market of individuals they have the capacity to serve reap the benefit of that, but the ownership ends outside those who used their capital to invest in those advancement. You work what it takes to live what you need to live, period, you aren't entitled to a specific amount of time to work, you aren't entitled to the money of others that you haven't worked on. So your whole last section reaps of a attitude and arrogance of entitlement based off economic ignorance in my view.

Notice how when you think of society, you think of "own", "develop", and "be owed". THAT'S what you value.

You talk about people who feel "entitled to the money of others that you haven't worked on", yet you simultaneously believe that those who own money are entitled to the money of workers solely because they already own more money. It's such an obviously self-serving philosophy and you just eat it up. Then YOU talk about arrogance of entitlement.

 

[David_TheMan]

So are you going to "engage" them by paying them to take good care of their children, their elderly, run their farms, restore the environment, volunteer, etc.?

Or by "engage the labor surplus", are you simply referring to continuing to monetizing things like water and childcare and cooking which never should have been monetized, or creating greater and greater artificial demand for more and more "stuff" that actually leads to no greater happiness or satisfaction in society at all while wrecking natural resources?

Engage them by working to remove restrictions on the market so that the economy can grow and labor market enlarges to hopefully use more of the labor available. how that is done in being nannies, farmers, cleaners, I don't know and I really don't care as long as the individuals voluntairly choose to perform the labor. Volunteering isn't engaging labor, seeing tht they aren't getting paid.

commercializing water, childcare are not things that should never be monetized, the fact that there is a market for those services instantly tells use your claim is just your opinion and that plenty others disagree with it.

It basically comes down to two questions. The first is whether you're going to pay people to do useful stuff or useless stuff. Virtually all of the labor surplus is currently engaged in useless stuff - either doing menial jobs for the rich that they could do themselves, doing machine-like jobs on assembly lines that machines could do, or making excessive products that no one actually needs. So you've already lost there. The second question is whether you're going to determine for the people what is useful (pay them to do all the things I described above), or let them decide for themselves (UBI). The UBI is all about individualism and freedom, so I assume you'd rather that one.

Again trying to use your opinion as the bar. Doesn't matter what you think is useful or useless, what matters if the market supports the good or service, the market or people determine what they want and if you provide service, you have the benefit of reaping the reward generating profit from the business. So your whole line of argument is nothing more than a pretty void of substance emotional opinion.

The UBI isn't letting them decide for themselves, they do that now without one, the UBI is stealing the money from the tax base and giving it to tax receivers or free riders. That isn't freedom that is state aggression and domination at its finest, taking from others with the threat of force to give to others for political support. Then you trying to claim that in individualism is even more absurd, it has nothing to do with individualism if anything its collective violence applied to those with money.

Yeah, but you seem to be really confused about who is living off of who.

I'm sure you believe that, but like most of what you posted in this thread there probably isn't much substance to your contention.

1% of the world has 40% of the wealth. Per-person, they're earning literally thousands of times more than the people at the bottom. Is it because they're working thousands of times harder? Are they thousands of times better people? No, they in large part were simply born into the right situation to take advantage of the situation of those on the bottom, so they were able to profit off their labor. Again, the very nature of an interest-based economy is that those who owe debts will have to continuously pay MORE back to those who gave them loans, so money is constantly flowing from the laborer to the investor. And in a shareholder economy, those who actually do the work find the benefits of their work constantly flowing to those who want to profit off the mere fact that they own money.

Living off the confiscated goods of others indeed.

So what if 1% of 40% of the wealth? How exactly does this support the policy you are arguing for in India? It doesn't its a red herring.
As for government subsidy to the rich I've already said its more than the subsidy given to the poor and it needs to be stopped and removed.

You know, fukk you, that's a good friend of mine and his life is hard as hell because of the kind of shyt you cape for, and all you can say is "good for him".

I'd love to see you in his shoes ages 10-16 and see if you could still spout this same bullshyt.

Again getting emotional and ignoring the point that you are the one trying to declare your want for your friend's life is greatr than what he wants for himself. While claiming you are an advocate for freedom. SMH

It's a basic principle of ethical philosophy that any view is corrupt unless you would be willing to support it without knowing ahead of time where in society you are going to be born. Yet you support a philosophy that provides giant benefits for those born into wealth and let's you say "so what" for those born into poverty.

Your ethical philosophy seems to be take from others what I want for myself using any means neccessary. You decry this when the rich do it too the poor, but you seem to have no problem if the poor are doing this to the relatively better off than them and it shows a very real hypocritical strain in your ethical philosophy.

As for those born into wealth, what is the matter, the parent who worked their life for accumulation shouldn't be able to pass on what they have worked on to their heirs, because an envious person gets mad? That is absurd on its face. Life isn't fair, it isn't equal, driving everyone down to the lowest common denominator of living doesn't make anything better, it just makes more people worse off.

Again, in that very quote, you're failing the basic premises of ethical philosophy again.

I'm sure you believe that, but having looked at what you advocate I have no problem running counter to your philosophy, that is a positive to me.

So why didn't those men build that tractor in the 1300s?

Knowledge hadn't been acculatied yet. Technological innovation takes time, its very rarely one thing launches everything instantly, its usually very incrimintal over long periods of times until collect knowledge is applied in new ways or new techniques developed and etc. The real factor though is what does it matter why it wasn't made in 1300, it literally has no bearing on the point, that said there were items invented in the 1300s that weren't around in the 100s or the BC era.

It was a gigantic, lengthy process spanning hundreds of years that led to that company building the tractor today. They relied on all sorts of work and labor advances that they had nothing to do with. The labor-saving technology of the present is the fruit of a long societal process. It's not solely due to the efforts of that one company that happened to have the capital in the right time and place, and there's no reason they alone should benefit from the labor-saving advances of society.

Not societal progress individual progress in a field. Society in immaterial.

And this so called "capital investment" is as close as it gets to a free lunch, especially when you see where most of that capital originated. You should thank God every day that you get to cape for an economic philosophy written entirely by people who wanted to justify what they already had.

You don't know what capital investment is if you think its free lunch, that or you don't understand what the term free lunch connotates.
If a person saves their wealth, and stores it and say moves it to a good called money, and with that money is able to fund the building of say a fishing net, that is capital investment, and if he can now multiply his ability to catch fish because of his investment in taking the time to buy or acquire the resources to make the net instead of doing other activity like say pole fishing or farming, he is not the recipient of a free lunch or goods given to him that he didn't earn, he is the recipient of being to first to jump on a more efficient method and increase his market specialization in fishing. This helps him, and the community if he decides that he would sale his fish or trade his fish for other goods, now the whole community that he trades with is better off in that they can use their time and resources for other things besides pole fishing or sustinance farming. This is basic basic economics, this is basic basic example of capital investment. This show how little you truly understand about economic thought and principles.

So why are Americans less happy now, with more free trade than ever, than they were in the 1960s when they had far less stuff?

Americans are not operating under free trade, NAFTA isn't free trade its corporatism. That said its impossible to scientifically measure things like happiness because you can project that on anyone, the opinions of those in a survey reflect strictly on those people in a survey they aren't transferable. On top of that I'm sure there are massive blocks of minorities that are far happier being in the US of today than the US of the 1960s

Why are the urban poor in Asia far less satisfied than the rural poor?

don't know, don't care

Why do factory workers and everyone else in mechanized lines of production hate their jobs so much?

Prove this contention

Where does all this constant growth come form, if you're not constantly destroying the environment and/or constantly monetizing things that didn't used to be monetized?

Growth comes from a larger market to serve, with comes from increasing income internally or letting those industries domestically access larger markets internationally. On top of that you have more job markets than agriculture and manufacturing. Again entertainment and service sector jobs fuel a great deal of growth for western and developed economies, and the same for rapidly developed nations like China.

When will you deal with the fact that the monetization of things has been proven to cause LOWER quality and LESS satisfaction?

Prove this contention.

Notice how when you think of society, you think of "own", "develop", and "be owed". THAT'S what you value.

Notice how you ignored the concept that society is immaterial and doesn't exist or possess personhood. I noticed that you ignored that outright.

You talk about people who feel "entitled to the money of others that you haven't worked on", yet you simultaneously believe that those who own money are entitled to the money of workers solely because they already own more money. It's such an obviously self-serving philosophy and you just eat it up. Then YOU talk about arrogance of entitlement.

how have I argued that people who own money are entitle to money of workers. I've never said such a thing. I literally said money is entitled to workers who work for it, and if you disagree that a person who works a job for an agreed upon wage isn't entitled to that money, just come out and say it instead of this poor attempt and ducking and dodging the issue of the massive entitlement you are arguing for. The funny thing is you want to claim what others should do with their life, and what you should be able to do with other people's money that you have not worked for, and claim I'm the one that is arrogant in saying let people live their life how they want and keep what they work for.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I started to reply to more of your messages, then I realized that would prove my own stupidity. There is absolutely no utility in sharing information with someone who can't or won't engage with it.

If you are anyone who agrees with David and really can't see how badly he's failing to engage with the actual points of argument, feel free to engage in his place.

If you, David, want to see what I've already typed, PM me and I'll send it to you. But I'm not going to continue to engage if it's going to be such a waste of time.

The main lines are argument are already out there for everyone to see. Everyone else here is just the blindness of your dogma showing how you will not even be willing to reinterpret your dogma in the face of someone who lives with it. The fact that you keep shouting "arrogance!" while failing to admit your constant mistakes or take into consideration any idea that doesn't fit your pre-accepted worldview is telling.

Have fun caping for your money-owning masters breh.

 

[David_TheMan]

I started to reply to more of your messages, then I realized that would prove my own stupidity. There is absolutely no utility in sharing information with someone who can't or won't engage with it.

If you are anyone who agrees with David and really can't see how badly he's failing to engage with the actual points of argument, feel free to engage in his place.

If you, David, want to see what I've already typed, PM me and I'll send it to you. But I'm not going to continue to engage if it's going to be such a waste of time.

The main lines are argument are already out there for everyone to see. Everyone else here is just the blindness of your dogma showing how you will not even be willing to reinterpret your dogma in the face of someone who lives with it. The fact that you keep shouting "arrogance!" while failing to admit your constant mistakes or take into consideration any idea that doesn't fit your pre-accepted worldview is telling.

Have fun caping for your money-owning masters breh.

Again if you wanted to say we just agree to disagree that was fine, but your ego can't take that.

You can't stand the fact that someone would have discussion with you and not agree with what you are saying and again you lower yourself to insulting me and insulting anyone who would agree with me, instead of just stating you disagree with my argument and don't support that.

Its fun you call me blind, when I actually address your arguments for what you present them to be, while you continually argue strawmen or throw out red herrings when trying to reply to me.

That said if you have no want to engage in a discussion, I see no reason for you to send me a pm of what you want to say.

I will end by saying I have no problem disagreeing with you, and just leave it at that, there is never a winner or loser, there is just discussion and I would hope in the future you can conduct yourself in a more mature and refined manner.
Have a good night.