Premise: Modern economic systems have no idea what to do with a productivity rate

[CK_John]

that can only create jobs for 50% of the world population.

Lower retirement age to 40 or 50 with a social security type stabilizer is a no brainer. But... the big problem is K-12 education.

Do we adopt a life science (metal shop, welding, cooking, arts/crafts, outdoor survival, etc) for 1/2 the students and geek type schools for college prep for the other half.

These problems are evident now. Politics will not be able to create jobs for more than half the population over the next 50yrs and any one who promises to do so, doesn't know their butt from their elbow.

What do we do?

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Shorter work week, higher overtime rate, mandatory annual leave.

Anything that constrains the supply of labor.

Constraining the supply of labor 10% would directly create new employment opportunities for 10% plus the increased economic activity would be enough to employ the rest.

"The world"? I have no clue. It is also not my problem.

[CK_John]

3. Your solution would only increase profits because this productivity rate would soak up that 10%

in a couple of weeks. Right now at least 10% of the work force is "mercy jobs" that are not needed and are being kept on because it is too much trouble for employers to dump. IMO.

[on point]

2. Beside helping environment we need to crash human population

To balance productivity needs and resources. Also make average person wealthier

[CK_John]

4. That is why I think it will take 50yrs for population to level out with productivity.

[The2ndWheel]

5. Make it up as we go

Then we'll have to deal with the consequences of what we did. Then we'll try to fix the problems that came about as a result of what we did. Then we'll have to try and figure out what to do about the issues that popped up after trying to fix the previous problems.

It'll just keep going on and on like that. The same way that it's been going on and on like that.

You could create an economy that is on a more human scale. Maybe not as efficient. Less mass production. That sort of solution would of course come with its own problems.

No matter which way, there's no perfect state to existence, and our attempts to build such a reality will fail every time.

[Ron Green]

6. How about a no-growth (steady state) economy based

not on consumerism but on the expression of people's passions and dreams?

I'm serious. It's a huge step from the past decades - even from the past centuries - but it's something worth working for.

[CK_John]

9. That's what it going to take, new ideas, new ways.

[The2ndWheel]

11. Passions and dreams don't require growth when confined to the imagination

The expression of those passions and dreams requires stuff from within physical reality though. You're talking about billions and billions of people. At least one passion and/or dream each, if not more.

Plus, how are you going to guarantee a steady state? You have to get everyone, everywhere, to sign onto that.

[bhikkhu]

7. Higher pay and expansion of service economy

If we don't need very many people working to produce the objects we surround ourselves with, we still need other people. Given the choice, people associate - dine out, go to theaters and concerts, play games, etc. If the wage system adequately distributes wealth, there is plenty to go around and the quality of life for all is increased.

[CK_John]

10. This leads into my idea of new type schools for what we use to call shop, less

emphasis on math and science but on building and fixing things, which will actually teach math and science in a practical way.

[Tigress DEM]

8. Change the system or create a subsystem.

Use the money coming back from Banksters to buy up land and properties to form Commonwealth Properties whose sole use is to turn renting into equity, like a condo.

Update those properties with the labor of the participants, sweat equity, into Energy Free or as close to it as possible units with solar and wind turbine power being developed everywhere to end this problem of people who need energy assistance dying in frozen climes or desert ones. Training adults in new energy crafts that requires intelligence and ability to labor replacing a lot of the factory jobs we've lost.

Purchase large hotels with their many common rooms and parking ramps. Make those into community zones to train on clean energy platforms and even put in hydroponics or small dirt urban gardens with vines of tomato's and cucumbers scaling the main atrium up to each successive floor and the residents who live there harvest the food and use it for members in the commonwealth properties, selling some to the residents in the neighborhood and setting up vouchers for food shelf users to come and get some Fresh N Greens with their bags of cans and boxes.

People at many income levels can participate, but they have to engage in a high percentage of green behaviors to remain in the program and contribute their outside wages into a plan to get themselves out of poverty or out of crises and into a state where they have voucher specific monies available for a years worth of expenses and some rent equity to take with them whenever they leave the program.

Say someone's house was being foreclosed, they could apply to make their home a commonwealth property and the FED buys it up and rents it back to the homeowner, basically a refinance and gives them more ways to make the rent. Valuing sweat equity behavior in the range of $10 an hour people get paid to do what makes the world a better place and brings the cost of living in their home down in energy savings, availability of healthy food. Their own energy needs could be met and the energy put back into the grid to offset costs and be a source of some income.

The Commonwealth Resource sites could also have electric shuttles, little electric cars to rent and the solar panels and/or wind turbines to power them. Greenhouses growing fresh spices and veggies for the restaurant use and some dried or fresh off to the Commonwealth CoOp as well.

[hunter]

12. "Productivity" needs to put down like an evil vampire. Drive a wooden stake through its heart.

What the economists call "productivity" is actually the destruction of the natural environment that supports life on earth.

I think we should directly subsidize people who are willing to experiment with low energy, non-resource depleting lifestyles.

In other words, subsidize people who don't have cars, create "vegetarian" and "locavore" food stamp programs, design urban homesteads of community gardens and self-sufficient solar powered housing. Subsidize low energy economic activities... arts, writing, music, etc.

Experimental communities that work could be expanded throughout the greater population until destructive forms of productivity (fossil fuels, automobile commuting, "factory farming," high energy chemical and GMO agricultural monoculture) were forced into obsolescence.

[The2ndWheel]

14. Where is the money coming from for the subsidy?

The system that is destroying the natural environment that supports life on Earth.

If it's a low energy, non-resource depleting lifestyle, why does that need a subsidy? Again, especially coming from the excess of life destroying productivity.

[hunter]

15. I talked about "money" where???

I did talk about "resources."

[The2ndWheel]

16. That's what subsidy usually refers to

Where is the resource subsidy coming from? It's still going to come from the excesses of the largest privatization mechanism we've ever built; civilization.

[hunter]

17. Let's say we passed a law that deveoloped property left "fallow" for more than a year or two...

... reverted to the community. Then that empty house, farm, shopping center, factory... left idle would no longer belong to the private entity not using it and would be open to homesteading by others.

If a private entity wanted to keep the property then they would rent it out for very low rates, maybe a dollar a year if an economic slump was bad or a city was dying...

Maybe a very low energy artistic community, backstopped by a universal health care system and "sustainable" food stamps, would move in.

"Successful" low energy communities might eventually create things of great value to society, and even communities that did not would still be living in a place with much less grinding soul-destroying poverty, at less expense to society than prisons, brutal law enforcement, and people crawling into the E.R. as very expensive train wrecks.


.

[CJCRANE]

13. "Jobs" are just stuff that needs doing.

We can always find stuff that needs doing whether it's the big stuff like building and maintaining infrastructure and manufacturing or the stuff that we don't always think of as jobs like childcare etc.

As human beings we'll never run out stuff that needs doing because we decide what needs doing.

For instance, there endless fields of research.