Thursday, June 12, 2014

Leisure vs. Capital

"And there is nothing evident on the horizon—no backlash beyond rhetoric, no movement powerful enough to curtail or channel the flow of capital to labor—that will halt this movement," says Zachary Karabell in Slate about the preponderance of "easy cash" in the world today. "There is only cash and more cash, generating steady gains far in excess of wages, inflation, or the growth rate of so many national economies."

The radical movement that will change everything is not to tax the wealth of the rich, i.e., contract the amount of capital. (Karabell is right to say that the problem is not an excess of capital, but an excess of cash.) Nor is it to "channel the flow of capital to labor". It's much simpler: central banks should print and distribute cash to everyone, thus channeling "the flow of capital", not to labor, but to leisure. This wouldn't actually be a flow of capital, but a flow of cash. It would "erode" capital, letting it flow downward. It would not produce more jobs (we don't need more jobs). It would simply give everyone the dignity of their leisure time. If you want to be rich, that's fine, the way you do this is to provide the people who have the cash (everyone) with the things they need.

No comments: