[vidarh]

This was basically Marx starting point: The idea that capitalist competition will cause capitalism to eat itself - sooner or later there are no new markets to expand into for growth, and competition will force ever slimmer margins and ultimately the only place you can trim margins in in employment costs. Then what happens to your market?

His belief was that on one hand capitalism was/is absolutely necessary to create sufficient wealth to make redistribution viable (he made the point in The German Ideology that a redistribution before that point would do what we saw e.g. in the Soviet Union: simply spread poverty around, and restart the class struggle it tried to erase as people tried to et out of poverty), on the other hand it would in its end-stages lead to "overproduction" combined with mass unemployment as it would fail to reconcile the need to try to win more of the market with the need to cut employment costs.

The ways society could prevent this happening are many, including things like basic minimum income as you suggest. But Marx argument was that societal changes of this magnitude tends to instead result in increasing tensions until revolutions erupt for the reason that ruling classes rarely see the gravity of the situation until it is too late.

There are many ways he could be wrong about this, but I find it very interesting to observe the increase in frequency with which this issue of automation and its consequencs is now coming up again.

[ctdonath]

Marx didn't consider how capitalism, coupled with a lack of a satiating supply of survival staples (aka today "guaranteed basic income" aka welfare entitlements), necessitates raising the accepted standard of living and thus creating a renewing demand for labor (mundane included). Most of humanity past did not enjoy what we now consider poverty-level baseline necessities, much of which exist thanks to jobs of all kinds both creating and buying those products & services. He never dreamed of the poor needing & owning cell phones, indoor running hot drinking water, a/c, a car for every adult, TV, etc.

[throwawaykeno]

Actually, Marx foresaw exactly "a renewing demand for labor" (although foresaw is kind of the wrong word; directly observed would be more accurate.) See "Capital".

He also foresaw the shift from manual labor to intellectual property as the essential component in production.

[solotronics]

What happens is QE is used in a top down fashion to infuse the market with capital. Basically the opposite of a living wage. Its happening now on a large scale ie. Japan and the US.

[mason240]

QE benefits everyone who borrows money for anything. We bought a house with a 3.1 rate, something that would have been unheard of in generations past. Same with rates for auto and every other type of loan.

[marvin]

Doesn't benefit me a lot, five years behind you trying to buy an identical home for 30% more borrowed money.

[sgnelson]

Doesn't do much for savings accounts.