I disagree with your first point if I understand it correctly. Even relatively right wing or libertarian economists like Tyler Cowen consider that the low hanging fruit for most businesses is now gone. There is a dearth of investment opportunities and the demand for labor especially at the low end is not there in the west.
Though I agree that there are people who can work but won't work, I think this is overestimated. This is a point of principle hardly worth arguing.
I'll take you up on your response to the expenditure of the poor ends up in the pockets of the rich.
The point is that the poor get "blamed" for needing this money. The market will allow the price of a piece of land with some bricks on it to increase due to demand. But clearly the market can't magically create land.
> Even relatively right wing or libertarian economists like Tyler Cowen consider that the low hanging fruit for most businesses is now gone.
Well Cowen is quite on his own with this possition and even he is arguing that it will pick up again. Read the last chapter of the great stagnation.
Also just having a economy that doesn't grow doens't really have anything to do with jobs. You can have full employment in a economy that is shrinking. The question is about laber market equillibrium, if wages ajust downwards eventually you will have full employment.
> The point is that the poor get "blamed" for needing this money. The market will allow the price of a piece of land with some bricks on it to increase due to demand. But clearly the market can't magically create land.
Well the market can creat land, but the market can creat any natural resource but that does not mean every resource becomes more expensive all the time.
If rents get bigger somebody will have the idea to nock down a small building and build a bigger one. Also the notion that there is a lack of land is strang, specially in america, there if tons of land that is very cheap its just not where most people would want to live.
The market can not creat land but it can creat living space.
Though I agree that there are people who can work but won't work, I think this is overestimated.
I think that people who feel that way generally overlook the role of housewives in society. I don't know if it's still current, but I recall a few years ago seeing estimates that ~10% of all women in America were unemployed, by choice, for reasons of home-making, or whatever the most politically correct alternative of 'housewifery' is (not trying to be inflammatory, I genuinely don't know).
As America has a slight gender bias towards females, that means that ~5% of the population is willfully unemployed. Unemployment is, what, 7% right now?
Also, yes, I'm well aware that employed does not negate underemployed, which is where I really feel that America is suffering right now, but we're just talking about employment figures.
I think you are misunderstanding. Nobody cares about voluntary unemployment, if people dont want to work and just live of some other source of income family, saving or something like that. There is no economic argument about that.
The problem is people that can work, but dont because the gain of working is not big enouth to overcome the lost of safty net payments.
Though I agree that there are people who can work but won't work, I think this is overestimated. This is a point of principle hardly worth arguing.
I'll take you up on your response to the expenditure of the poor ends up in the pockets of the rich.
The point is that the poor get "blamed" for needing this money. The market will allow the price of a piece of land with some bricks on it to increase due to demand. But clearly the market can't magically create land.