Without Economics

What do you propose as far as "reform"? So far you have suggested nothing.

You are saying the economic system needs to be changed. How would you change it? (I am asking for specific changes in policy and law, not broad platitudes like "more fair").

I have a set of skills that are valuable to large organizations (but not very useful to individuals). These skills required 7 years of education and decades of experience, and now I a good at it.

I need to take care of my family, and I my life's dream is to be a male model (something I don't do because I wouldn't make any money at it).

Describe another economic system that

1) Encourages people (who want to be male models) to do the work to get 7 years of education and develop valuable skills (in something other modeling).

2) Allows people with abstract skills useful to large organizations to make a living.

Economic reform certainly does not begin with "Describe another economic system that," which is an argument of defense of the system and the status quo.

It's a tough problem. I have a tendency to go big - start with the overall system, rather than piecemeal reform when more than 50 percent of the system is broken, which I think it is.

Piecemeal, you could set a bunch of metrics to the tax rates. No lending interest beyond the personal tax rate, For example: If a person is paying 0 taxes, then 0 interest. Paying 22 percent, then interest capped at 22 percent.
There are tons of piecemeal 'fixes.'

The system is Very broken. There is a measurable and significant percentage of corruption (name the form), unfairness, un-sustainability, lack of opportunity, and on and on. What would I specifically suggest?

The question to me should be how would I recommend doing reform, not what should be reformed and how. I would recommend a complete social systems review with recommendations. The societal goals should be formalized (use or modify The Constitution and similar historical documents if you want to, or make new ones) to insure that life is a priority, rather than wealth (which results from a capitalist system). That would be a great start.

To me, this is not rocket science. Societal problems are easy to identify, because of their scope, where large numbers of people and other life forms are affected. Example: Many people who cannot find work are not happy. They cannot adequately feed their children, or relax and enjoy their lives without that cloud behind their activities. That's a societal problem.

Some people work hard, and offer their lives up for others, while some people laugh at them, and hurt them, and target them, and bring overwhelming social forces against them. That is not unfairness. That is wrong, and it's a societal problem.

So asking me for specific remedies is saying that one person has all the answers. I do not. I can recognize the obvious usually, and I conclude that there are repairable social ills, and methods to find solutions for them. I don't see social reform happening today either on a large scale, or to benefit human and other forms of life. It's about time someone got to talking about reshaping the overall system to align it with life, intelligence, compassion, fairness, and good judgement, which is what I'm doing.

Issues with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer are less about our systems of government and economics and a lot more about individual greed, or what our society values.

We give millions to guys who whack a baseball effectively less than 1/3 of the time, and at the same time we underpay teachers and we starve our public schools so badly that parents are routinely tapped to donate pens, paper, etc to make up the shortfall. Nursing is in a huge demand because so many countries have an average age that is getting older all the time (often because of improved healthcare and sanitation, and safer homes and vehicles), so they are paid better than they were 30 years ago. Engineers of all kinds (software, electrical, etc) are paid well because they have in-demand skills and not a lot of people have those skills. Lawyers are paid well because of the bar exam, which means essentially a recognized certification. Similar is the case with doctors, who go through a lot of rigorous education and training, both in classrooms and on the job.

I work as a writer. I get paid a lot more writing for business or law than I do writing for auto repair shops or sporting goods stores, because I have specialized knowledge which comes from my education. Our system, at times, values education a great deal - and other times it does not.

I am not saying it is perfect - good lord it's not! But the rich getting richer is also a function of the wildly high executive pay out there now. It's also a function of an artificially low minimum wage. When full-time Walmart employees have to go on food stamps, that's a problem. When minimum wage doesn't buy an apartment in any major city unless you share a lousy unsafe place with a lot of roommates, that's a problem.

If you want to talk about the appalling government waste out there, then I'm with you. If you want to talk about executive pay being through the roof and college tuition way outpacing inflation, then I agree with you. But the capitalist system is actually a rather good one when it comes to rewarding individual effort and skills - albeit not all of the time.

Exactly, I am defending the system and the status quo. I will not argue that it is perfect, but I will argue that our current economic system works very well and is better than anything else that has been proposed.



I do not accept that our system is "Very broken". There is corruption, but it is historically low. There is some unfairness... but unfairness is part of social problems and our current system is fair in many ways that other economic systems aren't.

Lack of opportunity? There is quite a bit of opportunity. People are going to college, graduating, getting jobs, buying cars, building homes... every single day.

There is a problem of confirmation bias here Jespah... and you have to define terms. It is true that the rich are getting richer (as far as percentage of wealth and income). It is not clear that the poor are getting poorer. The income of the poor are stable, the buying power of the poor I think is rising (albeit slowly). The number of people in poverty is declining.

You have to be careful in separating political propaganda from economic truth.

I think the pay of athletes, and artists is a red herring. In any system of economics, people who can write popular fiction, or sing popular songs, or whack a ball in a popular game, are going to be pushed into stardom.

I agree with you about teacher pay (although I think you are exaggerating the point a little). This is a social policy that could easily be fixed if there were political will. This isn't a problem with economics... the economic system could do just fine with more public investment in education and health.