Hybrid Economic System

[The_Prince]

I've been working on a (hybrid) economic system that values Health, Education, and the Environment. The goal is no unemployment, no homeless, no commercials. Everything is premised on a person's net worth being a number on a screen (direct deposit, credit cards); a number that could potentially be manipulated/tweaked.

A Remedy:

Everyone keeps what they have. If you are currently employed, you sign a contract with your employer promising 40 hours of quality work a week (maybe we can eventually change it to 35). In exchange, you will receive your current salary (and/or a credit for hours worked), health care, schooling for your children, and you will be taken care of after retirement (age 68? 70?), or if some debilitating illness occurs. Farmers continue producing food.


No Taxes. Federal, State, Local – none. "The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax." -Albert Einstein. Instead, we give a “blank check” (or an Invisible Hand, or "a black hole") to city and local governments (or grassroots organizations) to hire everyone and anyone willing to work for the common good. It becomes a City Improvement or City Beautiful Movement. If you want to help rebuild Missouri, go do that. If you want to teach, (and meet the requirements) do that. If you want to do cancer research at a public hospital, do that. If you are willing to plant trees, do that. After verifying that you have worked your 40 hours a week, the city and local governments credit your account (change numbers on a screen). Perhaps we can also give this authority to a well respected local nonprofit or The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. All salaries from the “blank check” are public information (listed on a website). (If we can print money out of thin air, why can't we create jobs out of thin air?)


A moratorium on the stock market – either by vote, a congressional resolution, or executive order. Or we just pretend it's Good Friday and “the market” never opens again. Every penny (except margin accounts) invested gets returned to the shareholders. (at the current price, or if speculation occurs, the price on a specific day, say 4/30/11 -the courts can figure out what is fair).


To compensate companies for market capitalization, private companies get to "draft" (100, 500) workers. All unemployed people enter the “Employment Draft”. Starting with GE (largest market cap), companies choose the workers who will be the most beneficial to them. Jeffrey Immelt may choose the head of Goldman Sachs or Hank Paulson, or he may not. Erin Burnett can cover it on CNBC or Erin Andrews can cover it on ESPN 8 “The Ocho”. (or both, at the same time)(smile) The best companies also receive priority in architectural improvements etc.


Every two years(?), workers feeling unfulfilled, disillusioned, or people wanting a change, may reenter the draft and work for a different company and/or in another industry. (a 2nd Round Draft, if you will)


Medicine:

Highest priority placed on Prevention and Early Detection. Medical ID cards for everybody (like a credit card). Heavy focus on research (at least 10 years of “delibrate practice”) and maybe we can beat death. (harvested organs, stem cells, maximum nutrition, etc.)


Advertising

No more advertising. Not on TV, not on radio, not in magazines. (Maybe an exception for the Super Bowl. Maybe). Massive expansion of Consumer Reports and Zagat websites keeps consumers communicating and well informed.


Entertainment Industry

Media companies get a “blank check with a limit/salary cap” (what they are currently spending on talent). Actors/People in the Industry will receive a credit to their account, either negotiated with management or based on ratings.


Sports

Same as Entertainment Industry. (Sports are considered a public good.) Owner of team has a “blank check with a limit/salary cap”. Players must be clean of performance enhancing drugs and submit to regular blood testing. If they don't like it, they can retire or work in another industry.


College athletes will be paid (accounts credited by the university) commensurate with TV ratings, playing time, and jersey sales. They will also be required to take blood tests. No compliance, no compensation. Other student performers will also be paid by the university (musicians, theater performers etc.) commensurate with attendance and/or TV ratings, if applicable. Gus Johnson and Bill Raftery do the Final Four.


Insurance industry

None. Ideally, the entire industry can transition into Safety and Preparedness – making sure levies are built properly, bridges are earthquake proof, nuclear power plants are out of harm's way. “Failing to Prepare is Preparing to Fail.” -John Wooden


Schools:

Universities will be the center of our society. Universities will help run/improve K-8 and high school. School will be year round. Teachers will have summer off (or a different season off). All classrooms, school grounds, and day cares will have video cameras enabling parents to monitor their child any minute, hour, second of the day. We make music a priority.


Pricing:

We pass a law requiring product prices to accurately reflect labor. Beers at the ballpark will not cost $9. Manolo Blahniks will not cost $645. Popcorn will not cost $6.50.


Eventually we can (slightly) adjust hours worked to more accurately reflect their importance to society (i.e., 1 doctor hour equals 3 hours cooking - but we can decide that by vote, or like the NFL, in a courtroom). That way doctors can own the best real estate. But I have an inkling that musicians will be our most treasured asset.

We can vote on all other issues or let the Supreme Court decide. Ideally all decisions will foster Health, Education, the Environment, and quality Journalism.


In short, I'm trying to Maximize Labor. Maximizing Labor will compensate for the loss of taxes and private sector motivation.


Thank YOU for Your Time,

 

[ShackledNation]

I've been working on a (hybrid) economic system that values Health, Education, and the Environment. The goal is no unemployment, no homeless, no commercials. Everything is premised on a person's net worth being a number on a screen (direct deposit, credit cards); a number that could potentially be manipulated/tweaked.

Hybrid of what? Not sure what you mean. Are you saying government should enforce all these policies? Because that sounds like a centrally planned statist economy.

Everyone keeps what they have. If you are currently employed, you sign a contract with your employer promising 40 hours of quality work a week (maybe we can eventually change it to 35). In exchange, you will receive your current salary (and/or a credit for hours worked), health care, schooling for your children, and you will be taken care of after retirement (age 68? 70?), or if some debilitating illness occurs. Farmers continue producing food.

If you keep what you have, where does the money come from to provide all those free services? Why should the labor hours be set arbitrarily rather than have labor hours tailored to the needs of individual employers and workers? What if people want to work more, or some simply must work less?

No Taxes. Federal, State, Local – none. "The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax." -Albert Einstein. Instead, we give a “blank check” (or an Invisible Hand, or "a black hole") to city and local governments (or grassroots organizations) to hire everyone and anyone willing to work for the common good. It becomes a City Improvement or City Beautiful Movement. If you want to help rebuild Missouri, go do that. If you want to teach, (and meet the requirements) do that. If you want to do cancer research at a public hospital, do that. If you are willing to plant trees, do that. After verifying that you have worked your 40 hours a week, the city and local governments credit your account (change numbers on a screen). Perhaps we can also give this authority to a well respected local nonprofit or The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. All salaries from the “blank check” are public information (listed on a website). (If we can print money out of thin air, why can't we create jobs out of thin air?)

Like the idea of no taxes. But your last statement in parenthesis is completely incorrect. You cannot create jobs out of thin air. That is the problem with printing money out of thin air. If you create more money, you increase the supply of money. When the supply of money increases, its purchasing power decreases because it is worth less. This is due to the law of supply. When you have increased supply, price decreases. The price of money is represented by its purchasing power.

You can't create jobs and wealth out of thin air. That is an insane fallacy. You will get disaster. I highly suggest researched the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.

A moratorium on the stock market – either by vote, a congressional resolution, or executive order. Or we just pretend it's Good Friday and “the market” never opens again. Every penny (except margin accounts) invested gets returned to the shareholders. (at the current price, or if speculation occurs, the price on a specific day, say 4/30/11 -the courts can figure out what is fair).

No stock market? That would be disastrous. Investments in companies via the stock market drive economic growth. Without such investments, companies would have no funds to start new projects. Speculations is an invaluable tool of an economy. It signals to companies that they are doing something wrong, and warns investors that they may be on the road to failure. If the company is doing right and is not on the road to failure, speculators will lose money. Speculation helps to even out prices over time. This is apparent in oil prices. If there was no oil speculation, oil prices could shift from $2 to $4 overnight. Speculators predict that oil prices will rise in the future. In doing so, they even out the price change.

To compensate companies for market capitalization, private companies get to "draft" (100, 500) workers. All unemployed people enter the “Employment Draft”. Starting with GE (largest market cap), companies choose the workers who will be the most beneficial to them. Jeffrey Immelt may choose the head of Goldman Sachs or Hank Paulson, or he may not. Erin Burnett can cover it on CNBC or Erin Andrews can cover it on ESPN 8 “The Ocho”. (or both, at the same time)(smile) The best companies also receive priority in architectural improvements etc.

Employment draft? Sounds like slavery to me.

Every two years(?), workers feeling unfulfilled, disillusioned, or people wanting a change, may reenter the draft and work for a different company and/or in another industry. (a 2nd Round Draft, if you will)

Why not allow workers to choose where they work? If both the worker and the company can choose each other, everyone will get the best opportunity available to them at the time given current conditions.

Medicine:

Highest priority placed on Prevention and Early Detection. Medical ID cards for everybody (like a credit card). Heavy focus on research (at least 10 years of “delibrate practice”) and maybe we can beat death. (harvested organs, stem cells, maximum nutrition, etc.)

And you would enforce this how? And get funding how?

Advertising

No more advertising. Not on TV, not on radio, not in magazines. (Maybe an exception for the Super Bowl. Maybe). Massive expansion of Consumer Reports and Zagat websites keeps consumers communicating and well informed.

Those websites are advertising. Advertising allows consumers to become aware of new products. It is tyrannical to prevent a company from pitching its product to potential buyers.

Entertainment Industry

Media companies get a “blank check with a limit/salary cap” (what they are currently spending on talent). Actors/People in the Industry will receive a credit to their account, either negotiated with management or based on ratings.

Again, where on earth are you getting this money? What account? Who provides the check? Government?

Sports

Same as Entertainment Industry. (Sports are considered a public good.) Owner of team has a “blank check with a limit/salary cap”. Players must be clean of performance enhancing drugs and submit to regular blood testing. If they don't like it, they can retire or work in another industry.

The idea of public goods is largely fallacious. Calling sports public goods is nonsensical.

College athletes will be paid (accounts credited by the university) commensurate with TV ratings, playing time, and jersey sales. They will also be required to take blood tests. No compliance, no compensation. Other student performers will also be paid by the university (musicians, theater performers etc.) commensurate with attendance and/or TV ratings, if applicable. Gus Johnson and Bill Raftery do the Final Four.

Again, paid by who? And athletes are already paid for all the reasons you mention.

Insurance industry

None. Ideally, the entire industry can transition into Safety and Preparedness – making sure levies are built properly, bridges are earthquake proof, nuclear power plants are out of harm's way. “Failing to Prepare is Preparing to Fail.” -John Wooden

That is insane. No insurance? Insurance serves the purpose of purchasing certainty. You buy insurance to protect yourself against negative uncertainties of the future. The future will always be uncertain. Banning insurance will prevent people from adding layers of wanted security to their financial and social well being.

Schools:

Universities will be the center of our society. Universities will help run/improve K-8 and high school. School will be year round. Teachers will have summer off (or a different season off). All classrooms, school grounds, and day cares will have video cameras enabling parents to monitor their child any minute, hour, second of the day. We make music a priority.

Who is we? Who provides the schools?

Pricing:

We pass a law requiring product prices to accurately reflect labor. Beers at the ballpark will not cost $9. Manolo Blahniks will not cost $645. Popcorn will not cost $6.50.

Oh god stop. The labor theory of value is completely false. The reason beers at a ballpark are more expensive is because there is high demand for beer at a ballpark. People are willing to pay for it. Prices are not derived from labor. They are derived from subjective valuations. The marxist notion that labor determines prices ignores this fundamental truth: the purpose of production is consumption. It ignores the scarcity of resources. It ignores consumer preferences.

Eventually we can (slightly) adjust hours worked to more accurately reflect their importance to society (i.e., 1 doctor hour equals 3 hours cooking - but we can decide that by vote, or like the NFL, in a courtroom). That way doctors can own the best real estate. But I have an inkling that musicians will be our most treasured asset.

So you want democratic socialism.

I hate to break it to you, but your post is full of huge errors in economic reasoning. The biggest error is the labor theory of value. It is compeltely and utterly false. Here is why.

Considering the labor theory of value and what it would imply for human nature and the universe shows us exactly how wrong that it is: The starving man does not value ipods, TV's, or even mansions, the starving man values food, so let us take this starving man, and let us produce a logical check for the labor theory of value. The starving man must desire, say, a massive palace that consumed hundreds of thousands of work hours by tens of thousands of people, infinitely more than say, a basket full of apples which I picked in half an hour from a tree that I found in the middle of the forest into which no human labor has ever been placed..... Now how many starving individuals would take this palace, assuming that no food will be available therein, would take the palace over my simple basket of apples? The answer is, very few of the intelligent ones.

Let us take another example of a man named Tom. Tom is a hard working man who has recently discovered the Labor Theory of Value, and is absolutely delighted at its implications. So he goes to a local electronics store and buys a television for 50$, from there he returns home and proceeds to smash the thing to pieces for about an hour and then glues what he can back together which takes him a few days. Afterwords Tom drives back to the store and, looking the person at the cash register in the face and, with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye he asks the lady standing in front of him if she would like to buy a TV for 100$, he tells her about all of the hours and the effort that he put into the TV, and the cash register operator is absolutely thrilled at how labor intensive this single TV is, indeed it is obviously worth far more than 100$, at Tom's usual wage rate and the amount of effort that he built into gluing the thing back together it is obviously worth more like 140$ and the cash register operator happily purchases the product for that price. Tom Walks out happy and contented at a job well done.

In short, according to the labor theory of value, if I spent an entire year laboring 24/7 through snow and sleet and sweat digging a huge hole in the ground, that whole would be priced incredibly high, despite the fact nobody wants it.