Possibility of eliminating all the poors (by getting everyone rich)

[cheahchungyin]

Imagine a car.

First, There is the boss who invest money in the project. Then here comes the pros. They will always do the easier but more knowledge-required job. they design the car, improve the engines and make it more convenient to be used, all by paperwork. Next, those with less knowledge but still skillful in mechanics will be the hands of the pros. They have to practically build the car and do the hard work. And when the car is done, the pros will come back to test the car. After much improvement, then it will finally be ready to be manufactured in large scale. This tedious process will be done by factory workers, who have the lowest salary pay but will do all the hard work. Yet good sales will be credited to the marketing department, those who advertise and sell the product.

The idea of conveying this picture is to show how unbalance is the system we are having today, where those who did the most physical work get the least benefits, even though this matches the natural selection of mother nature, where the intelligence one will survive better.

we know that resources in the world is always the limiting factor, and work must be done to convert resources into really useful ones. By common sense, we will notice that there is always going to be someone who must suffer by doing more jobs in order to keep the world rolling, when there are the rich ones who gets money out of just investing without doing the real hard work.

Its obvious that mere talking do not give an increase in the world's useful resources, but all the professionals out there are doing this right now, and the schools are encouraging everyone to get a life like this. Efficiency of the world in getting useful resources will decrease when more and more people are getting involved in the "study and become professional" thing.

I'm not saying that education is not good, or getting a good life will bring on suffer on others. The professionals do give a raise in life by improving the technology and discovering new knowledge about the world, but as I stated earlier, there must always be someone having all the jobs done, and they are always those with the lowest salary pay.

Life should be about doing things we like. there is no point to do hard work which we have no passion in.

Question here is how possible is it to get everyone into the professional level, where nobody needs to do the tedious jobs to maintain the resources of the world? What is the possibility of getting everyone rich and nobody have to suffer from doing things they hate?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Imagine a car.

First, There is the boss who invest money in the project.

This analogy is largely flawed. A manager of a project isn't the one who invests the money, the manager is the one who is tasked with organising the team to get the job done. A good manager will have been a member of a team like this in the past and have good practical knowledge as well as the administration skills to keep things going smoothly.

Investors are those who put money into a project usually for a return. Without their money it wouldn't have happened and you can talk about the problems of companies being in a disadvantaged position when it comes to making contracts with investors (usually they need the money more than the investors need the company) but that's not the analogy here.

The idea of conveying this picture is to show how unbalance is the system we are having today, where those who did the most physical work get the least benefits, even though this matches the natural selection of mother nature, where the intelligence one will survive better.

This isn't true, it's not the case that in every field those who do the most physical work get the least money. Regardless why do you think that those who do the physical work deserve the most? This is the main problem of the discussion: people disagree on what counts as fair and as yet there is no system that everyone agrees is both better and fairer.

Look into theories of value, in some proposed systems there should be an objective way to measure the labour that goes into a task in order to put a value on the product. Other systems (like the ones that we use mostly today) propose that the value of a product is purely subjective and is decided by what people are willing to pay for it.

we know that resources in the world is always the limiting factor, and work must be done to convert resources into really useful ones. By common sense, we will notice that there is always going to be someone who must suffer by doing more jobs in order to keep the world rolling, when there are the rich ones who gets money out of just investing without doing the real hard work.

You're not going to have a productive discussion if you intermix serious topics with ideological sweeping statements that the rich do no "real" work (whatever "real" is).

Its obvious that mere talking do not give an increase in the world's useful resources, but all the professionals out there are doing this right now, and the schools are encouraging everyone to get a life like this. Efficiency of the world in getting useful resources will decrease when more and more people are getting involved in the "study and become professional" thing.

I'm not saying that education is not good, or getting a good life will bring on suffer on others. The professionals do give a raise in life by improving the technology and discovering new knowledge about the world, but as I stated earlier, there must always be someone having all the jobs done, and they are always those with the lowest salary pay.

I don't understand this, are you saying that academics do not work and contribute to society?

Life should be about doing things we like. there is no point to do hard work which we have no passion in.

Question here is how possible is it to get everyone into the professional level, where nobody needs to do the tedious jobs to maintain the resources of the world? What is the possibility of getting everyone rich and nobody have to suffer from doing things they hate?

That's a lovely idea and not one I think anyone would really disagree with. It would be great if we lived in a leisure economy and various authors have wrote on the subject, often citing increased automation and efficiency as bringing down the number of hours everyone will need to work. However this runs into the Jevon's paradox in which increases in production are met with increases in demand. As for abolishing absolute and relative poverty it is possible to do both but many people disagree with the methods that would be required.

 

[cheahchungyin]

Thanks for pointing out my mistakes, Ryan_m_b .

This analogy is largely flawed. A manager of a project isn't the one who invests the money, the manager is the one who is tasked with organising the team to get the job done. A good manager will have been a member of a team like this in the past and have good practical knowledge as well as the administration skills to keep things going smoothly.

Investors are those who put money into a project usually for a return. Without their money it wouldn't have happened and you can talk about the problems of companies being in a disadvantaged position when it comes to making contracts with investors (usually they need the money more than the investors need the company) but that's not the analogy here.

What I meant by boss was the investors and the owners of a business, sorry for the wrong word. English's not my main language so please forgive me for the carelessness, I will do better as I go along.

This isn't true, it's not the case that in every field those who do the most physical work get the least money. Regardless why do you think that those who do the physical work deserve the most?

Ya, I believe that your right here. Pay rate are quite different in different fields so I cannot make a general conclusion about it. Yet its a truth that those who do the physical jobs are going to sweat more than those who don't, right?

What I was going to say is that there is always a need to have someone doing the most tedious jobs in the world we live today (such as factory workers who repeat the same action for more than thousands of times a day), and these jobs will never attract passion from anyone, because nobody wants a job that pays too low, boring and sometimes even risky. Everyone deserves to do what they love, even when it comes to earn to get a living, right?

But then, here's how the system is going to be unbalance. When everyone is getting themselves into the more comfortable jobs, tedious jobs lack sufficient employees to keep the business running. Just like how the roots are buried in soil, the most tedious jobs are often the production line of the business!

This is the main problem of the discussion: people disagree on what counts as fair and as yet there is no system that everyone agrees is both better and fairer.

Look into theories of value, in some proposed systems there should be an objective way to measure the labour that goes into a task in order to put a value on the product. Other systems (like the ones that we use mostly today) propose that the value of a product is purely subjective and is decided by what people are willing to pay for it.

Getting fair looks like a short-termed idea to me, because efficiency in producing better resources will decrease if we try to be fair in the values. So I think what we should do is to look for something that could do for the long run, maybe making attempts in replacing the tedious jobs with better ones (which I don't think is quite possible) or eliminate them by using robots (but the usage or robots will decrease working chances!). Well, that was my original question here. How can we remove all the tedious works from the world's job lists and still keep the world running, so that everyone can be rich by during what they like?

You're not going to have a productive discussion if you intermix serious topics with ideological sweeping statements that the rich do no "real" work (whatever "real" is).

I know that the rich ones do have their important roles in the world, sorry for conveying the whole topic in the wrong way . What I meant was if there are more and more rich ones, there will be less people who wants to do the boring jobs, the head is going to be bigger than the body, and its a bad sign.

I don't understand this, are you saying that academics do not work and contribute to society?

About academics, I agree that they do contribute a lot to our world. The increase in human knowledge does give a big change in all our life aspects, but they do have side effects. Nobody will want to learn for years and get a PhD in medicine, just to become a janitor in a clinic right? This seems impossible, but this day will come and the problem will magnify, 100% guaranteed if human race never end first.

That's a lovely idea and not one I think anyone would really disagree with. It would be great if we lived in a leisure economy and various authors have wrote on the subject, often citing increased automation and efficiency as bringing down the number of hours everyone will need to work. However this runs into the Jevon's paradox in which increases in production are met with increases in demand. As for abolishing absolute and relative poverty it is possible to do both but many people disagree with the methods that would be required.

Just checked the net about Jevon's paradox . Okay sorry I'm a science student so I'm not yet familiar with economics :shy: , and this is why I'm trying to get myself immersed in related topics now . Hey so the main problem here is the resource right? Even if the Earth's resources are limited, the universe aren't! We need to conserve energy, and its not less important in finding a way to extract more.

Didn't convey the whole topic fluently, here's the main idea I wanted to say.

1. The world is not fair because the production line workers often do the harder boring jobs, but being fair is not solving the problem of limited resources and the need of doing tedious jobs by workers. It only reduce productivity.

2. People deserves doing what they like, so tedious jobs shouldn't exist, but they are the roots of the tree, so removing them seems impossible.

3. Since resources are limited, so its impossible to get everyone rich, unless someone comes out with a way to increase them.

4. What are the possibilities in getting all the poor ones rich, not by just giving them money, but by really increasing the world resources and replacing the bad jobs with better ones?

Really appreciate the comment and I hope for more mistakes pointing here

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Don't worry about your English, it's very good.

1. The world is not fair because the production line workers often do the harder boring jobs, but being fair is not solving the problem of limited resources and the need of doing tedious jobs by workers. It only reduce productivity.

I wouldn't say jobs like that are harder with the exception that it may be harder to do because it is boring. Designing a product is usually harder than building it. There is also the question of what exactly is "fair". If Alice spends years studying, saving, researching and designing a product then why shouldn't she get the majority of the revenue? If Bob builds it how much should he get?

Note I'm not arguing any particular position here, just showing the types of discussion.

2. People deserves doing what they like, so tedious jobs shouldn't exist, but they are the roots of the tree, so removing them seems impossible.

I agree that society should be structured so as to allow the most amount of people to live fulfilling lives. Not everyone agrees with that though if it means sacrificing the "freedom" of some for the many (see negative and positive liberty). Note that this doesn't mean that people should be totally free from tedious or unpleasant jobs but ideally they should be to the extent it is detrimental to their lives.

3. Since resources are limited, so its impossible to get everyone rich, unless someone comes out with a way to increase them.

There are two types of poverty: absolute and relative. The former is things like access to food, clean water, shelter etc. I think it's entirely possible that everyone on the world could be supplied with these things with the resources we have. Relative poverty is things like not having adequate transport or access to education or having little disposable income compared to others in society. This too can be solved but not everyone agrees that it should. In some countries there are very high progressive taxes which go into extensive public services. Some people think this is a good thing, others think that it is a bad thing because you are forcibly taking money from some people to give to others.

4. What are the possibilities in getting all the poor ones rich, not by just giving them money, but by really increasing the world resources and replacing the bad jobs with better ones?

We don't need to increase the worlds resources unless you want to give everyone on Earth the life of a billionaire in the US (which would be quite wasteful!). The ways that are tried now and are in some countries successful include significant social provision e.g. tax credits, benefits, socialised medicine/transport/education etc. More speculative proposals are that of a guaranteed minimum income or a basic income guarantee.

Note though that these are not perfect systems. You can get significant problems with generations of people living off welfare and never contributing to society. This can cause social tension amongst other things.

Lastly regarding automation you might be interested to read this thread we had recently
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=545877

 

[russ_watters]

Then here comes the pros. They will always do the easier but more knowledge-required job...

This tedious process will be done by factory workers, who have the lowest salary pay but will do all the hard work...

The idea of conveying this picture is to show how unbalance is the system we are having today, where those who did the most physical work get the least benefits...

Why do you consider non-physical work to not be "hard work"? Do you not see value in what they do? If they traded jobs, which do you think would do better at the other's job? Don't you see value in work that is intellectual hard?

Question here is how possible is it to get everyone into the professional level, where nobody needs to do the tedious jobs to maintain the resources of the world?

It isn't possible. Even if we created robots to do all of our physical work for us, there'd still be people incapable of doing intellectually hard work.

What is the possibility of getting everyone rich and nobody have to suffer from doing things they hate?

Zero.

 

[russ_watters]

This is the main problem of the discussion: people disagree on what counts as fair and as yet there is no system that everyone agrees is both better and fairer.

Expansion: The system used primarily in the Western world is market capitalism, whereby market forces determine the value of both goods and services. When it comes to labor, the critical factor is scarcity. Intellectually challenging jobs pay better than ones that aren't mostly because fewer people can do them and so the employers have to pay the employees more. My company has trouble finding people for $80,000 a year jobs, yet people will line-up around the street to be a Wall Mart greeter at $15,000 a year.

But there are exceptions, as Ryan said. Some physical jobs are so physically demanding or distasteful that they must pay well to attract workers. People would much rather be a Wall Mart greeter than a garbage collector, so garbage collecting pays much better.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Expansion: The system used primarily in the Western world is market capitalism, whereby market forces determine the value of both goods and services.

Just to add for clarity though what's practised is mixed economy so regulation will have an effect on the prices of some products and services e.g. extra taxes on tobacco and no tax on children's clothing.

But there are exceptions, as Ryan said. Some physical jobs are so physically demanding or distasteful that they must pay well to attract workers.

Or require a lot of talent to the extent that people will pay a lot to see it i.e. sport, comedy, performers etc.

 

[clfst17]

It isn't possible. Even if we created robots to do all of our physical work for us, there'd still be people incapable of doing intellectually hard work. Zero.

This seems like the most likely scenario that takes shape over the next 50-100 years. A small amount of extremely challenging intellectual work that employs just a fraction of society with virtually all of the manual labor becoming automated. Wealth gap will increase. Lots of welfare checks.