Dannyf,
Experts seem to agree that in not very long a time (25 years - give or take decade or so) the kinds of jobs that were the norm in the 20th century will be very rare and most people's incomes will come from inherited wealth or investments, or similar.
Leaving an awful lot of people with virtually no way of supporting themselves with consistency. The only way we can prevent that is by taking a much broader, less elitist approach to education, and especially stop trying to beat the spirit out of poor people, something increasingly clueless American politicians seem to do by habit, but the fact is, its not necessary to do that because we wont need them to work. Beating people's creativity out of them is counterproductive.
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Easy fix,
If you think there are a majority of like minded people, why don't you run for office and change things?
The problem is, we're signing trade deals that will take away the politicians ability to change the reasons for it by giving them in the form of new property interests, to various corporations. the only way to change things will be to start your own country outside of the jurisdiction of these trade pacts. Elections will be symbolic, and leaders will be more ceremonial than not, thats already happening in the US.
Or form your own alternative to health insurance companies, others are doing it, not to much success yet but hey at least they are trying instead of complaining about it.
The problem is, the government isnt allowed to do almost everything which we think of as the ways to save money. Remember the beginning of the Obama Administration when he spent all that time with whatever hiis name is from Louisiana who was the head of the association of drug manufacturing companies, and then they emerged with a cover up that claimed all those things had been taken off the table as part of some deal? the fact is, they were all already trade positions, but true to form they created a cover story so they would not be discussed.
. About the only thing that they are allowed to do anything beside abandon sick people (because everything else would in some way be either "trade distorting" or require breaking some ideologically rigid policy) is increase global trade in services, so that would mean either shipping sick people elsewhere for treatment, or - and this is the most likely short term, in fact its part of the Geneva treaty, the US and other signatory nations, when a corporation wanted to move their employee from country to country, in an intra corporate transfer, member nations would have to recognize their licenses - from other countries. That is part of the disciplines on domestic regulation. The model for this were the GATS disciplines on the accountancy profession, which can be read, they are public, basically recognize licenses and issue visas in all services for the employees of sining (low bidding) services firms (contracts will be procured using a global -e-bidding system) That would aply to a great many professions, and only then would they be deemed "no more restrictive than necessary to ensure the quality of the service". Wages will fall, there may be no limits on that, or their may. Certainly, paying a foreign PhD or MS a minimum wage is a good deal for the customers of multinational companies.
As for the whole trade stuff, well we will see an increase of 0.5% income in the US for very little investment (relatively)
Global economics are a very complicated thing, just trying to tame that beast to stop the rapid fluctuations of the global economy that we have been experiencing lately is not an effort in vain. But if you have a better solution, just spill it out instead of just complaining.
We should understand that the gains may be concentrated in one area and all other trades may see big losses. For example, it seems that studies about one big trade deal are largely negative as to jobs, and my impression is that it will see almost all its gains in the automotive industry and losses elsewhere for smaller companies and market sectors that cannot adapt to the new normals. (
http://ttip2016.eu/blog-detail/blog/ttip%20jobs.html - note that there are lots of links at this URL to other studies, they are worth reading)
I think that gains for the US may be concentrated in areas like pharmaceuticals and agribusiness, and of course, the lure of an almost unlimited possibilities of replacing expensive, often union labor with cheap globalized staffing in expensive services is a huge draw. They may be able to do away with the "economic means tests" and wage parity requirements too. ( Foreign services firms are already gearing up to service this anticipated market. See tradeinservices dot net, for example. ) And the protests from displaced "professional protectionists" will have a hard time arguing with the provision of jobs to firms from Afica and South Asia - certified Least Developed Countries (LDCs) will be allowed to maintain "state oenwed enterprises" like public monopolies in educational brands and health care monopolies (concessions), and discriminate in certain areas as far as their regulations, while rich countries like those in the EU and especially US will have to end them. they will be out of ceremonial politicians and the ceremonial Presidents hands. Subsidies in wages (minimum wage laws) and other forms of protectionism that disproportionately exclude firms from trading partners are framed as "more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service" in successful wealthy countries like the US.
So, my final impression is that we're going to be overwhelmed with a whole set of changes which almost nobody will understand the rationales for (and if they do understand them they are likely to disagree with them)
When you change so many things at the same time, the risk of a huge disaster I think are astronomical. I think its sheer insanity to try to make so many changes, with unexpected impossible to guess outcomes, at once.