So, a society gets productive enough that not everyone is needed...

This is a feature in a lot of science fiction. The tasks of making society work become doable with fewer people. (For instance, sci-fi robot cultures usually have a human labor surplus.)

I would suggest that any society where a lot of the work does not pay a living wage has a labor surplus.

In science fiction, when productivity gains make a lot of labor redundant, people are doled off. SOmetimes at a luxury level, sometimes at a poverty level, but doled off just the same.

It is necessary. A labor-surplus society either features a lot of leisure or else it is industrial revolution London... Hell on Earth. In a completely unregulated market a labor surplus will compete itself to below subsistence.

Of the many ideas that America's state religion of Americanism cannot handle is that paying someone to not be in the labor market is the same as paying a farmer to not grow crops. It is a price support. (The food stamp program exists primarily as a farm price support, hence its history of support by red state politicians form Kansas, Iowa, etc..)

The dole is a price support for labor. A person doled off at a low minimum income is not taking the money of honest workers as charity. She is being paid to leave the labor market so those who chose to work can get high wages.

(IIRC, the British dole was an attempt to reintegrate millions of returning servicemen into a labor market that was already declining, with the end of war industry.)

We often hear someone say, "These bums need to get a job." We seldom hear, "These bums need to come to my workplace and offer their services for half of what I am paid."

I have always supported a minimum income that is low enough that most peple would chose the higher standard of living afforded by working, but enough that a person could get by.



In a related topic—work visas for skilled workers are like the strategic petroleum reserve. A strategic labor reserve. If any skilled field becomes well paid the government can regulate those wages by releasing a supply of new-to-the-market labor with those skills.

The big difference from the strategic petroleum reserve is that we do not use the oil reserve to regulate prices because that would be irresponsible. But regulating wages downward for skills that happen to become high-demand skills is considered normal.