Taming the Urban Primate

From an article in the NYT:

From a 'distributarian':
High inequality reinforces corruption by allowing a few ‘crony capitalists’ to lobby politicians or regulators to protect their economic advantages. When national income goes mostly to those at the top, there is little left to motivate people lower down. The 2007 collapse of Wall Street and bailout of banks-too-big-to-fail showed that inequality in income and power can threaten economic stability and give the few a stranglehold on the economy.

From a 'antidistributarian"
“safety net programs face a well-known equity-efficiency tradeoff: providing more resources for the poor can raise their living standards, but it also gives them less incentive to raise their own living standards.”

and

the expansion of the safety net both immediately before and after the financial collapse of 2007-9 was the major cause of rising unemployment

and

new federal programs providing loan forgiveness to homeowners with “underwater” mortgages as well as other means-tested programs — meant that for nonelderly heads of households, federal safety net benefits “increased from about $10,000 per year” in 2007 to “almost $15,000 per year in 2010, adjusted for inflation.”

and finally

“that actual safety net expansions and minimum wage hikes were, in combination, enough to explain the reduction in labor hours since 2007, and many of the other changes in the major economic variables.”

We will not be harvested for Soylent Green -- we will be harvested for Cognitive Surplus. Rough B3aST is providing a plateau of existence for urban primate leisure. The EU and the US have reached that plateau. Further excitation of the economy of these primate colonies will draw down on the energy requirements of the emerging economies. We have hit the glass ceiling.

Let's pick up some Chipoltle Ranch dressing and Pampers while we get the oil changed

Now it is time to make cat videos and argue politics with our friends on facebook while we consume chimp chow and cash government script at Walmart. Within 20 years time, all global cities will house the urban primate colonies where cat videos and twitter comments are generated. The robots are not clever in this way and they never will need to be. This is a job for the chimps -- we have all become Kardashians.