From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 03 1998 - 11:49:43 MDT
At 07:49 AM 9/3/98 -0700, you wrote:
>I think Robin had an idea which could help with the problem of structural
>unemployment due to job skills becoming obsolete. The idea was that
>you could sell "income futures" which would give the buyer a percentage
>share of your future income. (Apologies if I misunderstood the idea.)
I did propose this, and it would be a way to implement certain kinds of
unemployment insurance.
I think asking us to "fix unemployment" is a bit too broad. It's like
asking us to fix "ill health", "poverty", "stupidity", or "arrogance".
There are lots of causes of unemployment, and a discussion would best
focus on one of them if it is to make substantial progress.
1) Search - one is between jobs, and doesn't want to grab the first job
that comes along. Similarly, companies don't want to hire the first
candidate that comes along.
2) Minimum wages - supply & demand may not meet with imposed wage bounds.
The price employers would be willing to pay may be below the bound.
3) Capital constraints - people may not have assets to invest in their
own education and training, and so may settle for less than their
potential. Others who might invest may be stopped by bankruptsy laws
which prevent effective indentured servitude.
4) Time runs out - if your industry/career gets smaller, and you're near
retirement, it may not be worth retraining you.
5) Bad luck - if your industry/career gets less in demand, you may have to
accept being less in demand. Insurance can mitigate this loss.
6) Poverty - if you live in a time/place with little capital, and moving
is prohibitively expensive, capital may be too expensive to make it
worth training you.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:32 MST