If you are poor, it's because you want to be or because you're stupid

Most people think they're above average, although some cultures are different. This is not as ridiculous as it sounds, since competence is often difficult to measure, but it has important implications for economic inequality in a democracy. While you may think you deserve more money (unless you're already part of the top 1%), you probably think that other people who are just as poor as you don't deserve anything from the government at all.

This is the height of stupidity. If this is you, you're poor because you're stupid. Many rich people don't really mind if the government raises taxes as long as it's done fairly. The opposition to this has, in fact, mostly come from the poor themselves, due to the fear that the money from honest taxpayers will be spent on welfare or given to corporations instead of efficiently creating jobs.

"the revenue per employee at S.&P. 500 companies increased from $378,000 in 2007 to $420,000 in 2011." "the top 1 percent pocketed 93 percent of the gains in 2010. 37 percent of the gains went to the top one-tenth of one percent. No one below the richest 10 percent saw any gain at all." If you're poor and don't want to be poor, the money is there. All you need is a solution that your above-average friends will support, which this message attempts to describe, and a firm resolution to change your life.

CONTENTS
1. Courses of action
2. The solution to unemployment
3. Overall effects on the poor
4. Types of businesses
5. Benefits for the rich
6. Smart people stuff


1. Courses of action

You can use this message by reading enough to understand how it works, then getting your friends to read it and agree with it. Businesses that could benefit can adopt the suggestions immediately, while nationally it either becomes a law or politicians get voted out of office.

2. The solution to unemployment

Americans can do some things very well. Other things are simple enough to be done by anyone with some training, and have been outsourced to people in other countries who are willing to work for less. But there is always work which does not result in a finished product that can be transported on a ship, and this is what the nation can focus on instead of trying to undercut Chinese competitors on price.

The reason jobs are scarce is because we have become so efficient that it takes fewer people to do the available work than are looking for jobs, and people with jobs have no incentive to work less than full time. Working long hours is seen as a mark of dedication by an employee, but the reality is that laziness can also be a virtue. According to Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, German Chief of Army Command from 1930 to 1933,

"Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the high staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy is fit for the very highest commands. He has the temperament and the requisite nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be removed immediately."

Businesses that qualify can take advantage of this by giving an incentive to employees to work less when there is no further useful work to be done. Taken from the full proposal,

Work concept

A third major way to determine employee compensation, in addition to a monthly salary or hourly wages:

The first 20 hours are paid at 1.2 times the normal hourly rate for full-time work.

Work beyond 20 hours in a single week is paid at 0.8 times the normal hourly rate.

3. Overall effects on the poor

If enough people take the option of working less, unemployment would go away and income inequality would decrease, meaning that the poor would no longer be poor unless they choose not to work.

Controlling other costs of government would be done in other ways, but access to a job for those who are able to work would allow the government to eliminate many types of inefficient practices or programs that serve only to compensate for income inequality or joblessness.

The adoption of this system would eliminate inefficiency in the economy in several ways:
1) businesses that used it would see more efficient workers, less need for layers of internal bureaucracy, and would avoid costs of rehiring or training when demand temporarily decreases or increases.
2) money would be spent more attentively on average, which increases the utility of any purchase by avoiding unnecessary costs, products or services.
3) more use of private services instead of public ones due to lower income inequality, in cases where a private provider is more efficient, or the elimination of government spending that serves only to create jobs.

All of these would increase the real standard of living of anyone with a typical-sized income from working and would allow tax money to be diverted to where it is needed.

4. Types of businesses

Not all businesses would have a reason to adopt this system. The three main benefits to employees that a business could extract profit from are efficiency increases for employees that value their time, more dedication to the business for employees that value the option to choose how much to work, and lower hiring costs for employees that value stability in a time of economic depression over continuing to work full time.

One example of a type of business that would not directly benefit from this concept are logistics companies that operate warehouses for online retailers, where hiring costs are minimal, efficiency is reached by firing employees who don't meet productivity targets, and forced overtime allows a low base wage rate by keeping total income of employees at a reasonable level.

Other businesses might have exemplary management practices that have allowed them to avoid inefficiency and keep profits high, or as high as is possible given competition. While these businesses might not see any immediate benefits from this system, they might use it to retain skilled workers during low points in the business cycle instead of being forced to fire workers for short-term profitability targets.

Sales jobs that work by commission or are otherwise already rewarded by the quality of their interaction with customers, and jobs that include periods of inactivity, would also not have any efficiency increase from using this concept.

For other businesses, the possible efficiency increases can be understood through the concepts of auftragstaktik which emphasized the intent of a command and workplace empowerment with a similar goal of greater autonomy, as well as to some extent flexitime which has been gaining popularity in the United Kingdom.

5. Benefits for the rich

Since this would cause their income to go down relative to the rest of the nation, the rich would benefit mostly from a healthier society and a reduction of all the problems that poverty causes such as crime and poor provision of public facilities and infrastructure.

In some cases, the strategies for becoming rich would change since being honest would be more rewarding, so business in general would seem more ethical to the casual observer. This might affect who decides to participate in markets or the leadership of corporations.

6. Smart people stuff

A larger number of people with lower incomes from working less would change the demand curve for many products, forcing prices down in cases where prices are significantly above the levels required for profitability. For example both airlines and breakfast cereal makers benefit from economies of scale, but breakfast cereal makers are more profitable because their customers are less sensitive to price.

The effect on businesses that sell to corporate customers is more difficult to predict, but there are likely many opportunities to save costs which are currently not taken simply because corporate profits are already so high that the utility from using a familiar product is often worth the additional cost.

In general, much of the profits of many businesses are the result of this 'monopoly' on the product which their customers desire to use, instead of any kind of productivity advantage over their competitors. When selling to consumers this monopoly is often in the form of a brand, with American brands such as the iPhone having a reputation for individualism that can lead to people selling body parts or experiences to obtain them. It seems unlikely a change to support greater individual freedom, by working less at a competitive wage rate, could lead to a reduction of the reputation of the United States or the power of its brands.

Improvements in the objectivity of people who are given the option of working less would lead to additional benefits such as greater accuracy from the democratic process and a reduction in conflict throughout the world. While this type of result could happen through other means with the design of other systems that people will encounter, the need to introduce contradictory goals when designing standards of measurement is not obvious because the assumptions of people interacting with those standards will depend on their experiences outside of that system. It is easy to assume that the only thing needed is an accurate measurement, since the external benefit to society of a more complex system is difficult to predict.

A Story of Love, Good and Evil

The purpose of this dialogue is to determine whether humans are by nature good or evil. The audience is those among us who are not aware that this was an issue. I thank you for your participation.

The myth adopted by the Christian religion and its relatives is that by acquiring knowledge, humans were cast out of a "paradise" where they could live forever. Buddhism, as well, has much on the topic of why problems exist in the world.

What these myths refer to is a conflict between the concept of love and the goals of society, which seems difficult or impossible to resolve for those aware of it. One admonition of the ancients was to "see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil", but like all methods to address the problem this had only limited success.


To love someone means to place their wants and needs above all else. This has significant implications, including that you should attempt to reach your own maximum potential so that you may assist that person. In a society which rewards being good, the ideal state would be one where your own goals do not conflict with those of society.

However, in the search for ways to benefit someone you love, you may encounter a way to prevent yourself from hurting them by building a hidden weakness into your mind that allows yourself to be controlled by others. Consider the following questions: If someone imagines you to be happy, are you? If someone imagines you to be unhappy, are you?

These questions, as well as the desire to benefit the person you love, can lead to unexpected conflict when you encounter a common situation: a large number of people who are wrong about something in a way that hurts society. Uncertainty about how such a situation can arise leads to questioning whether the more intelligent members of society have the desire or ability to prevent such events, which affects whether one should lie about being good to most benefit the person you love, due to the inability to answer the above questions about your happiness. At this point, you are cast out of "paradise" until such point in time that you can forget that this problem exists or convince yourself that it leads to no negative effects on society.

However, most people cannot convince themselves of this, and as a result are unable to gather the strength needed to correct these problems as they appear since they see no end to their efforts from that approach and no reward, which means doing so would not benefit the person they love. The conflict between the concept of love and society is clearly evident, and can only be resolved by fixing the underlying problem that leads to the above contradiction or by determining that it is impossible to fix due to a lack of desire by society to do so.


Thank you for your attention up to this point. The underlying problem can be stated, in one form, as "the tendency to assume that people who are more intelligent than you have already figured out all the answers to succeeding in life." The reason this doesn't work, quite simply, is that there's no completely reliable way to figure out who is the intelligent person with the answer without thinking through the same problems they did to arrive at a solution on how to succeed. Society has never been perfect, and each successive generation will habitually test, reconfirm, and contradict the assumptions and norms of previous generations and systems of knowledge.

It is said that people become wiser as they grow older. However, this is just as imperfect a way of determining how to succeed as any other and so it is important for people to learn this "wisdom" as soon as possible, because democracy, commercial markets, and many other ways of polling society assume that people make decisions with accurate knowledge of the consequences of the collective opinion on worth without regard to age or any other distinction between those who respond.

This leads to the method of addressing both this underlying problem and also the unemployment and general economic injustice that currently exists in the United States and much of the rest of the world:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-people-of-the-united-states-have-faith-in-the-human-race-by-fixing-unemployment

The existing writings on that topic should be sufficient to convince of its effectiveness in reducing unemployment. This dialogue goes beyond mere economics and instead concerns the hidden problems that result not only from the easily understandable situation of people in poor financial condition with the desperation that can result, but also the underlying willingness of the most competent members of society to address this type of problem and other problems which can have unexpected consequences for even the most well-meaning member of society.

Simply put, when correcting these problems is not rewarded by society, then anyone who appears to be good can be treated as dishonest and evil due to the very real possibility that they are. Furthermore, if society does not adopt this change to enhance the collective intelligence of the human race, then anyone in love with another person and aware of this issue will have no reason to feel any more internal conflict about ignoring this problem and will in a very real sense be "evil" in the classical sense of the word, despite the lack of any way to prove this and appearing at every level to be as good as any other member of society who ignores these problems.


So if you ignore this message, nothing much will change. Problems will exist in the world like they always have. But the concern expressed by people toward those problems will be fake, and the most intelligent of people will do only as much as is necessary to prevent you from being able to decisively conclude that they are being dishonest. This will, of course, include the full use of the state to inflict violence in a way that seems to an honest person to be very unjust. Wealthy people, as always, will live a life of comfort while the poor are afflicted by crime and poor health.

The choice is yours. Are humans good or evil? If you wish for them to be good, sign the above petition or offer a convincing reason why it is incorrect. If you wish for them to be evil, no action is necessary: you need only to read this message without replying.


About the author: I was going to say something about myself but it didn't really fit. I currently have no income and sleep at night on an embankment above a freeway. I have done everything I can to ensure that my future depends on someone whose appearance I have never seen and whose voice I have never heard, and another person about whom I know almost nothing. Although I didn't watch The Hunger Games I have read the book Battle Royale which is similar.

Explanation for low consumer demand and inefficiency

"A story begins when something unexpected happens."

This is a message to the entire world. It explains why economic injustice exists despite technological progress and how to fix this problem, but there are no villains to be found here except our own assumptions and prejudices.

One assumption is that it's easier to spend money than it is to earn it. For some people, this is just not true, because they earn money by doing literally no work or at a rate that vastly exceeds what's reasonable to spend in everyday life. Anyone who's been in this position, whether in the real economy or a simulated one, knows that the work required to spend money can easily exceed the work required to earn it.

Partly for this reason, the people of the democratic nations of the world have been content to allow wealth to accumulate in a small number of individuals, which effectively makes inequality someone else's problem and responsibility. The problem with this approach is simple: do people who deserve help need it despite being able to accomplish their goals on their own or because they cannot accomplish their goals on their own? If the former then there will always be questions about better uses for that money, while if the latter then there are already serious problems with society because some of the people who deserve help will inevitably not be recognized or receive any. Inequality is not something the rich can fix on their own.

So this turns into a question of how to make becoming rich more difficult so the average person doesn't just assume "someone else will fix it" when they encounter a problem but instead have the ability and opportunity to do something about it themselves. Furthermore, the strategy which leads to this situation should strengthen the society which adopts it, as well as any businesses or individuals that decide to direct their actions towards this goal.

This may seem like a difficult demand but it is achievable, due precisely to the tendency for people to avoid doing something which seems to be harmful to other people without any definite agreement on this from the rest of society. For as long as inequality has existed, workers have avoided being as efficient as possible unless there was an obvious benefit to the society in which they lived, such as the risk of society's destruction from war or the growth that can occur after one.

For those who doubt this inefficiency exists, consider these questions:

• if doing a certain task or spending effort does not result in a significant change in opinions of other people, to what extent will that task be done?
• who is most aware of the importance of a task or able to understand the quality of its execution (not the same)?

In any complex work environment, there will inevitably be something that someone could do to help the business without anyone else knowing of its importance or even that it was done at all. There are various ways to attempt to measure these things or simplify the work process so that mistakes and efficiency can be more easily recognized, but these changes can introduce their own problems and are not suitable for all work environments. For tasks that completely lack any kind of reward or recognition from within the business, the most likely reason for doing them is that they help society or expand the capabilities of workers who choose to do them.

A key recognition is that while higher productivity itself is good for a business and can lead to higher rewards for an employee, it can be bad for society when the share of profits going to workers decreases and capital owners are unable or unwilling to reinvest this money in a socially beneficial way. Therefore, it helps to have a system where higher productivity by some workers can be rewarded without giving the management of a business any excuse to lower wages for less productive workers because it allows the more productive workers to feel that their efficiency, or doing tasks that go unrewarded but reduce inefficiency for all workers, is not harmful to society.

Conceptually, it's simple: being more efficient would give you the option to have more free time, but earn slightly less. This means there would be no excuse to lower wages for either the productive employees or the less productive ones, since the total income or ability to support themselves has not gone up for anyone as a result of addressing specific inefficiencies that the management of the business was unaware of. An employee who worked less would gain a higher average wage with this system, but with a lower total income that employee's increased difficulty of paying for fixed costs of living would mean that a business could expect that most employees would be agreeable to working more or less as the business requires, within reasonable limits, in response to changes in demand.

With this basic description of the concept, it seems people have contentions on two points: whether it would lead to any decrease in the average time spent working for employees of businesses where it was adopted instead of the opposite effect; and whether a decrease in the total income of efficient workers could ever lead to a decrease in unemployment or a reduction of inequality.

For the first point, it should be noted that businesses already have incentives to hire as few workers as possible, to reduce the complexity of management and to prevent people from quitting or complaining about a lack of hours that the business allows them to work. This can even lead to requiring overtime which allows a lower base wage than people would normally accept, with two examples being workers at Foxconn in China before wages were raised after a string of suicides and the pay and conditions of many temporary warehouse workers for logistics companies contracted by online retailers in the US today. Any movement toward lower hours must therefore come from workers themselves, and a higher wage rate would give people a clear reason to do so as a socially acceptable way to live as part of mainstream society.

For the second point, it's just a matter of taking two common fears and looking at them in a different way. Outsourcing or moving jobs overseas is seen as being a threat to the American middle class and way of life, but only occurs because the lower standard of living in developing countries allows workers in those countries to accept lower wages; the way to take advantage of this is simply to buy items at lower prices when other countries make this possible. The wealthy, or 'American upper class' are sometimes seen as having antagonistic interests to the somewhat-less-rich and the relatively poor, but in fact represent an accumulation of consumer demand that is significantly limited only in the rate at which purchases are made, allowing the economy to be sustained even if the income of the typical consumer falls.

The prediction of the effect on the world, then, is that Americans who choose to work less can do so allowing the large number of unemployed and underemployed college graduates to enter the occupational fields they studied for. The middle class continues to sell to the rich, those in less-skilled but still essential occupations sell to the middle class and the rich, while everyone buys products from developing countries that depend on American ingenuity and expertise to maintain a high level of efficiency and product quality. Many countries view food self-sufficiency as an essential goal but retaining the knowledge needed for a revival of its manufacturing base should be more important to the US than worrying overly much about where the products that we use are made.


http://www.change.org/petitions/the-people-of-the-united-states-have-faith-in-the-human-race-by-fixing-unemployment