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Apocalyptic Economics: How Mass Death Boosts Wages
Submitted by Daniel Drew via Dark-Bid.com,
To the 99%: Choose your poison: death or unemployment.
As Zero Hedge recently reported, a record 93.2 million Americans are not working. The presence of so many people on the sidelines shows the lack of demand for workers and an oversupply of labor. As I have noted previously, some employers like to say there is a shortage of workers, but they are lying. If there were a real shortage, wages would be rising, not stagnating or falling. Three rounds of quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve shotgun of monetary policy have failed to solve the problem.
Unfortunately, the most effective solution is a very grim one, and it is devastating and immoral. I'm not advocating this as a solution, but reality cannot be denied: The most effective way to raise wages would be orchestrating World War 3. If a few billion people disappeared, it would clear out the oversupply of labor, and wages would rise. This is basic economics, and history shows it is true. When the Black Plague wiped out a third of the European population in the 14th century, wages increased. Also, during the population boom just prior, wages had been falling. This clearly shows the inverse relationship between labor supply and wages. Once the oversupply of labor was cleared out, the survivors enjoyed a higher quality of life.
Paul Tudor Jones recently warned that enormous wealth inequality will lead to revolution, taxes, or war. He is right. Without some form of government intervention that artificially raises wages and prevents the rich from exploiting the poor, there will eventually be violence. That violence will clear out the oversupply of labor and fix the problem in an evolutionary way. If this happens, you can be sure the war will be quite profitable for the arms dealers and defense contractors.
With so many advances in medical science, mass death as a result of an epidemic seems less likely. War will probably be the cause. However, last year's Ebola situation reminds us just how limited we still are. And on Monday, fleas tested positive for plague in Arizona.
The economics of the apocalypse are knocking on our doorstep.
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All I need is one little EMP to get a raise.
Ebola will save the middle class.
Now that's thinking outside the coffin
Mass deportation of illegals will have the same effect. Whodathunkit?
It is the nonproductive eaters that need to go. Supply and demand. For an economy to balance you need equal parts, supply and demand. Eaters only demand, which raises costs for all of us. Unfortunately it is the producers that must carry the added cost of both the eaters and their lack of production.
Wouldn't a mass die off reduce demand about equal to the reduction in the work force? Seems like a zero sum game to me.
Mass die off hits the lower class far more than the upper class as they can afford to hole up until Ebola have passed.
Less people to share over same amount of money, means higher wages. Especially when money was gold which stayed constant.
I can recall reading that Black Plague resulted in the ruling class taking control of most of the productive land in Europe. The aristocracy just seized all the abandoned land.
I don't have much faith in carpenters wage rates from 1350. Economic statistics from today are just a bunch of made up nonsense. 800+ years ago data are probably just POOHA figures.
The nobility already owned all the land in Europe outside of say the northernmost parts of Sweden and Finland. Freeholding was never significant, by the high middle ages it was practically nonexistent. The Black Death did cause some shake-ups of ownership - illegal seizure, automatic forfeiture to the king (the name of this practice escapes me), death of all eligible beneficiaries, etc.
"The most effective way to raise wages would be orchestrating World War 3."
It is being orchestrated as I write this. Shouldn't be long now.... unfortunately.
Why would we care about demand created by those who will not pay for it? Sure they pay their bills...maybe, but the thing is, we, the producers are writing the check to them to buy the stuff we make. Not all that different than Germany loaning money to Greeks to buy their cars...knowing they will never pay it back. Like the money our government pumps into our economy, like the money spent through debt, it is not true payment. It is deferred payment at best that must come from future labors. It is money lost if it is given through redistribution or entitlements. No different than you going to work every day and clocking out at noon and doing free work for your unemployed neighbor. Sure you still have a forty hour week, but what do you really have to show for it. Every dollar transferred to a non producer comes directly out of your pay unless is debt, in which case you will take it out of next weeks, or the week after, paycheck.
0b1knob Wouldn't a mass die off reduce demand about equal to the reduction in the work force? Seems like a zero sum game to me.
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Not really. The "cost" of people is greater then the expense of their (our) deaths. That is why you have so many social programs going bankrupt around the world.
The reality is that social programs are MLM or pyramid schemes and would be illegal if you or I did them. But since they are government sanctioned, they are okay. They still are designed to fail either way.
Unleash the ziological weapons! Oh...hmm. Make that the BIOlogical weapons!
Maybe I was right the first time...
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.globe-report.com
are you good?...does winter enjoy your efforts?
"I'm not advocating this as a solution, but reality cannot be denied: The most effective way to raise wages would be orchestrating World War 3."
Yes, You f**cking are! You just stated what you believe is solution. Please Stop this non-sense since some wacko in gov't will do just that. F**cking stupid Ass.
"Without some form of government intervention that artificially raises wages and prevents the rich from exploiting the poor, there will eventually be violence"
What are you smoking, crack again Gov't is the F**cking problem. More gov't intervention will only make the problem worse. Your'v f'ing Nuts!
Another cheery ZH article.
Right? Death or "unemployment" whats worse... Cant we all just make 7k working part time from home? lmao
Yes we can! Of course, at that point a hamburger will cost $1,000.
The "Plauge in Arizona" thing has been there for decades. So long as people manage to not play around in mouse poo they'll be fine. Good try Daniel.
Dan is Nancy's retarded brother.
Mouse poo carrys Hanta virus. That isn't the same as plague. There may be more diseases in the world than just the ones you are familiar with. Mosquitos carrying plague is a different sort of thing.
Signs all over the California back country warn against plundering small dead animals carrying Bubonic Plague.
Nice false dichotomy numb-nuts......
Eating at Taco Bell equals bubonic plague equals rising wages.
The elephant in the room with this comparison was there was no automation at this time to "save" labor.
At best, one had water wheels, sails, and horse power derived from actual horses, or other such animals, or people.
You have chosen death. But first....UNGABUNGA!
This is an idiotic post. The 93m unemployed are consumers and contribute to the bottom lines of companies employing Americans. If this Daniel Drew had more insight he would know that decreasing the size of government, regulatory burdens and taxes, and by eliminating coddled industries (which is almost all of them) would enable society and commerce to thrive.Advocating mass death when numerous superior solutions exist is the product of a sedentary mind.
Yes. 93m consumers are eating, but they are not paying. For whatever they contribute to demand, we, the remaining producers, not only must also pay for their consumption but any added costs of demand. If unemployed consumers were a positive for an economy, Germany wouldn't have a problem with Greece right now.
you are wrong the system is already moving on a two level solution - War & Murder by Neglect
A - War = will be Nuclear only - 1.5 + billion people - quick - and then rebuilding with new fiat currency
B - Murder by Neglect = no jobs > no cash flow > higher cost of living > less discretionary income coupled with elimination of SS and Medicare / public education / Medicaid / will speed the ever shortening of life span
It probably will be Nuclear but that will be so destructive that there won't be any place to work when it's over. Will work for food will be typical.
Fuck stupid ass posts like these... Articles like these assume that we are born with and cannot change the current profit based system. As opposed to WW3 and killing billions for sake of job creation how about we change our system to a resource based society creating abundance and livable conditions for all. After all, dont we go to work to provide us the means to live? Dumb ass motherfuckers like these who think within the confined box that cannot see a solution. If the Earth's recources were utilized in an efficient manner and with the help of techinology Earth can support a population of 10+ billion. Lack of imagination and inginuity is fucking epic.
How long before they start selling derivatives on staying vertical? (alive)
Isn't that what derivatives are...bets on debt which is tied to our productive lives?
The real reason that wages are stagnant is because we are competing with slave labor in China. The .gov and the MIC decided that bringing more nations into slavery would solve the problem but it isn't working out. They will probably try just killing millions instead of thousands to see how that works out but it won't end well for anyone.
Zorg approves...
Mini Ice Age is coming. That should do the trick.
Global warming and the mini ice age are fighting each other.. Nuclear winter will probably win though...
Wages rose after the Black Death because the supply of capital was fixed (the only significant capital most societies had was land). We don't have that problem any more.
Our problem is that capital is increasingly replacing labour as an input to production. Once robots are developed that can do any job we can and do it better, our masters will be free to exterminate any and all humans deemed a potential threat to their rule by any of a number of horrifying means, leaving all the fruits of Western civilization and science to be enjoyed by a few thousand people, served faithfully by an army of robot slaves.
The class war goes on, the bad guys are winning, and they don't plan on taking prisoners.
"Wages rose after the Black Death"
Not exactly a lie or a myth, but totally irrelevant. First, plague epidemics returned many, many times right up to the 1800s. Second, the Black Death was exarcebated by climate change. The Medieval Warm Period ended about 50 years before the Black Death arrived, but about 30 years earlier the Great Famine decimated both population and economy and neither had yet recovered. Labor was already scarcer and agriculture was becoming more difficult, climate and weather were becoming less hospitable and more unpreditctable because Europe was entering the Little Ice Age. Most of those who survived the Great Famine had severely compromised constitutions and had chronic illnesses as a result of severe childhood malnutrition; they had no chance against the plague. In some places wages rose, but in many they did not. One problem is evidence: in the high middle ages the money economy returned, but prices and fees were documented in traditional units such as chickens or bushels of grain regardless of how they settled. Regardless, the situation of the average peasant worsened considerably and did not really begin to improve for hundreds of years.
They shoulda BTFD.
Population goes down, supply of labor goes down, wages go up.
Unless Obama is in office, because if he is, population will go down, illegal immigration will flourish and wages will also go down, until everyone is a radical homeless Muslim living in America conveniently inside a DHS weapons storage depot that doubles as "free housing" for minorities.
This is garbage, written in isolation of the 'rest of the world' in which we have a fully intergrated economy. Quoting evolution is stupidity at its highest level.
All jobs have been outsourced to asia, all jobs domestically are being computerised and automated. This is capitalism at its best, bringing down the middle class to the 3rd world level, creating the ongoing divide in equality.
If war was declared tomorrow, what the fuck would 99 million people actually do? start producing guns tomorrow in the back yard for god and country? bull shit.
We have machines building machines, this is evolution, we are witnessing it.
So you still haven't figured out what capitalism is, eh?
This is garbage, written in isolation of the 'rest of the world' in which we have a fully intergrated economy. Quoting evolution is stupidity at its highest level.
All jobs have been outsourced to asia, all jobs domestically are being computerised and automated. This is capitalism at its best, bringing down the middle class to the 3rd world level, creating the ongoing divide in equality.
If war was declared tomorrow, what the fuck would 99 million people actually do? start producing guns tomorrow in the back yard for god and country? bull shit.
We have machines building machines, this is evolution, we are witnessing it.
Goverment intervention IS the way the rich exploit the poor. What is he talking about? War is just another government program.
Is not war a form of government intervention? He calls for the government to intervene before the government starts a war?
The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go.
No, WWIII wouldn't solve anything it seems:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/global-population-science-growth-study-wars-disaster-disease
Global overpopulation would ‘withstand war, disasters and disease
National Academy of Sciences says even brutal world conflict or lethal pandemic would leave unsustainable human numbers
... We were surprised that a five-year WW3 scenario, mimicking the same proportion of people killed in the first and second world wars combined, barely registered a blip on the human population trajectory this century,” said Prof Barry Brook, who co-led the study at the University of Adelaide, in Australia.
... Even a worldwide one-child policy like China’s, implemented over the coming century, or catastrophic mortality events like global conflict or a disease pandemic, would still likely result in 5-10 billion people by 2100.
Who cares about wages? The policymakers certainly don't. That's not what will bring us to WW3, rather it'll be the US crazy will to hegemony, and the capitalists' greedy desire to reconstruct afterward (and to unload their surplus of bombs now). See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbjhbDF4VI4
http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/16/4571
It's the fiat money system that's wrong. Even WW3 would likely not change the system, only add even more debt. The debt-based paradigm has to be replaced. Default or backed by something real... Negative interest rates in an ever exceeding indebtedness (monetary hyperinflation) where the CBs of the world monetize the debt that can never be repaid. A world economy based on fiat bubbles... ...that will not end well. WW3 is of a monetary kind. It's the 99% against the 1%, the CBs, the cronies of the world, the corrupt governments that have all gone bad.