I appreciate you poking holes in my assumptions and suggestions, seriously, because I don't know how to solve this.

I know I don't want parents/grandparents ODing on heroin in a parking lot with a child in the back of the car. [1] So where does society start to fix this? How do you give people purpose and the means to embrace that purpose?

What good are self driving cars/trucks, machine learning/AI, and all that comes with it if you've hollowed out any substance your species had? EDIT: Maybe the Amish had it right the whole time. Social fabric above "progress".

[1] http://ktla.com/2016/09/09/ohio-police-post-photos-of-adults...

Make labor cheaper. Not for the worker, but for the employer.

1. Wage subsidy. Tax people like me more to increase the EITC. At the extreme this is make-work jobs, but there is a lot of ground to cover between here and there.

2. Make employment cheaper. Cut down on employment taxes and other expenses associated with employing people.

3. Make employment easier. This won't happen overnight, but, after coming to wage and term agreement with someone, I should be able to hire someone by clicking a few links on a government webpage. And I say "I should" as a person, not as a corporation. Make everyone in the country able to hire another person quickly and easily. If I see too much trash on a street in my neighborhood, let me hire people to clean it up a few times a week. I shouldn't need any kind of HR department.

I disagree with you here: labor should be more expensive so make work jobs (telemarketing anyone?) are driven out of the labor marketplace. I'd rather the government provide jobs in a transparent manner that build, improve, maintain infrastructure, national parks, etc. There's no reason we can't transition from consumers to stewards of our local communities and national resources.

I have yet to see an employer who is friendly to labor, so that's where I'm coming from why I don't trust employers to be the solution (removing minimum wage, wage subsidies, etc). Labor regulation should walk softly but carry a big stick.

Example: We subsidize Walmart employees pretty heavily with government resources. We should not be doing that, and I highly doubt most people in those jobs feel as useful as they could be.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/walmart-government-subsidies-stud...

http://americansfortaxfairness.org/files/Walmart-on-Tax-Day-...

Telemarketing isn't "make work." They are providing value to their employer.

You are hitting on one of my concerns, though: make labor cheap, and people could be hired to basically annoy other people. I want to keep it simple, but there are certain categories of jobs that need to be ineligible for wage subsidy: anything that involves attempting to grab someone else's attention or time. So no sandwich board walkers, no demonstrators, no telemarketers, no door-to-door salesman, no picket walkers. Those can still be employed by businesses if they want, but without subsidy.

If you don't trust employers, you can bid up the wages of labor yourself by hiring people. Think what a non-profit interested in increasing recycling rates could do with access to cheap labor. In fact, all sorts of environmental issues are reduced by cheap labor. We can stop dumping old VCRs on China to disassemble. A local environmental group can collect them, and then use a disassembly line to teach workers the basics of technology repair while breaking out all the components for responsible disposal.

If you want to keep people employed but not willing to risk employers possibly benefiting in any way, well, it indicates that improving the standards of living of the workers wasn't your real concern. Keep in mind that "the government should take care of paying for health care" would fit in with my recommendations but run afoul of your objections.

In China, when [say] 100 people are about to get fired government will negotiate a deal. That might be to have them hire 300 more for at least 2 years, get 25% of the salary in advance and have them provide training for 200.

I don't remember the exact numbers but it was some kind of custom combination like that designed specifically for the type of business.

danielweber,

Interesting idea, I think to some degree we already do this in an roundabout manner. We provide subsidizes (corporate tax exemptions for R&D) and billions of dollars of direct grants to scientific research for example, that can be thought as a wage subsidy for scientists. We definitely need to increase the EITC, and expand it to singles and couples without children. The EITC is probably one of the best ideas to counter an increasingly automated economy.

It is perhaps more realistic to think if those direct science grants as a subsidy to industry - it provides the fundamental research (i.e. much of the high risk hard work) results cheaply to industry, which captures most of the value later. The corporate R&D grants I think you are correct on, though.

    Cut down on employment taxes

I haven't been able to figure out why employment taxes are paid by the employer and not shown to the employee as yet another deduction on their paycheque. Is it because most employment taxes are collected by local governments who don't have power to impose "income taxes"? Is it because it's politically easier to hide the tax from employees so that they don't realize they are paying it?

In the US they are split 50/50 between the employer and the employee and go to the Federal government. If one is a contractor or unincorporated small business then they see 100% of the payroll tax as a self-employment tax.

2 and 3 for sure. Anything that makes it so small businesses can more easily and cheaply hire people will have a big impact. Employment taxes, workers comp, etc may seem like they are helpful, but because they raise the cost of hiring employees, they discourage businesses of a certain size from hiring

> Employment taxes, workers comp, etc may seem like they are helpful, but because they raise the cost of hiring employees, they discourage businesses of a certain size from hiring

The outlawing of slavery made cotton more expensive. We still have cheap t-shirts.

There is no excuse for rolling back labor protections when there is so much wealth available to society; its the distribution that's the problem.

I don't see how employment taxes are a worker protection.

> I know I don't want parents/grandparents ODing on heroin in a parking lot with a child in the back of the car. [1] So where does society start to fix this?

1. Provide universal access to free abortions and contraception so that people who do not want to have children will not be forced into childbirth.

2. End the war on drugs so that people can have access to safe opiates and clean needless. When both are available at your liquor store for less than the cost of a six-pack of beer, you will find that suddenly addicts can both hold down a job because they do not have problems with withdrawal symptoms due to uncertain supply, and the violent and larceny crime rates plummet because affordability and price gouging by dealers is no longer an issue.

I hope that you can get an operation performed by a junkie doctor. Maybe then, if you survive, you will understand that their inability to have a job has nothing to do with the withdrawal.

There are magnitudes more alcoholic doctors and other professionals out there. By your logic we should be bringing back the prohibition.

Ah ok since there are already people that drink then let's make heroine, that is orders of magnitude worse than alcohol, legal. I tend to forget how many junkie-huggers there are on HN.

>How do you give people purpose and the means to embrace that purpose?

You separate purpose and a meaningful life from wage-labor.

Yes, I entirely agree. But how?

Education. Better funding for education from elementary school on up will help provide a much better foundation for deriving meaning from our lives

>It depends on their form. People aren't on drugs because they don't have enough money. People are on drugs because their lives lack meaning, and simply getting a government check won't change that. A man cannot provide for his family by simply being alive to cash a check.

That's a cultural issue. A man can very much provide for his family "by simply being alive to cash a check" and not think twice about it.

Unless the culture finds meaning only in the workplace -- and not in tons of other activities and pursuits.

> People are on drugs because their lives lack meaning, and simply getting a government check won't change that. A man cannot provide for his family by simply being alive to cash a check.

I think a lot of this has to do with perception. As in, "how am I perceived if I take a check from the government."

We have cultural norms as to what is "valuable". Maybe someone focusing on their art will one day have more meaning, and you won't have to feel bad taking a check from Uncle Sam while you work on your painting, sculpting, or woodworking skills.