I was talking to a friend of excavation and I asked this. She said “of people everyone should beryllium working, I mean, I’d for illustration to beryllium capable to bargain much stuff”
In that connection though location really is simply a non evident implied logic. So the adjacent question: does economics support that connection always? That if we want much stuff, and amended lives, everyone should beryllium moving harder? No, only sometimes; successful economics, utilizing a assets to it’s fullest astatine each times is not a given. Labor is simply a resource, for illustration water, and yet we do not drain the oceans pinch the aforesaid fervour arsenic we employment people, trying to find a occupation for each drop.
When we person implicit assumptions specified arsenic these, it drives our decision-making. A leader should not request to hunt for occupation creating policies, and yet they do because admittedly the replacement is poverty. Not because the system couldn’t supply for that person, but because the only measurement for the system to supply for them is done the wage.
Here is simply a very elemental connection which whitethorn sound a spot mean: it is wholly feasible that giving a occupation to a “stupid” person, sloppy of really overmuch we effort and train them, mightiness costs the system much than we benefit, successful aggregate.
Disagree each you want connected the meaning of “stupid”, but you cannot contradict that specified a barroom exists, and notably, that that barroom moves up, and only up, arsenic exertion improves. What that intends is, location whitethorn good beryllium cases wherever the system would really for illustration to pay personification to stay retired of the labour force, but correct now, it can’t. Remember erstwhile lipid prices went negative? It’s difficult to understand really that tin happen, but astatine slightest for oil, the system has the powerfulness to group that value antagonistic to fundamentally opportunity “hey, I don’t want much of this correct now”.1
We person to extremity assuming that the system wants everyone to beryllium working. Otherwise, we whitethorn beryllium silently strangling it pinch labor. Our existent systems of taxes and benefits almost wholly presume we request everyone. By the findings of Acemoglu and Restrepo 2026, there’s already bully grounds that for the past 40 thing years, this presumption has been hurting us.
I’ve worked connected this thought for a mates years now, and somehow, it managed to culminate successful a mentation of really wages are set. You tin publication astir it here:
https://wilsoniumite.com/2026/08/03/working-on-economics-with-fable-5/
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