How does it makes sense to move towards social programs because people will no longer be required to work?
It makes sense to move toward social programs because people will no longer be required to work. Social Security and Medicare are examples social programs that hand out money to people so that they are no longer required to work (or consume their assets first). The GOP is a huge defender of those (along with the DNC). But the GOP is clinging to older generations and needs to be ready to pivot toward a growing number of younger less privileged voters who, over the course of the next 10-20 years, are going to finally wake up to what's being done to them. The GOP needs to shift its emphasis away from old conservatives living in a past era and be ready to appeal to younger adults.
How are you going to fund an increase in social program dependency to such an enormous scale?
The same way we fund everything else. We could much more easily fund more robust welfare programming if we abandoned the pension model for senior benefits.
Are the producers going to cover the entire cost of everyone else?
Yes. Even if the GOP has all three branches of government for the next 50 years, invariably the producers will continue providing for everyone else, as they have been for decades.
Wouldn't it be better to reshape the economy to not depend on work than to just expand welfare?
In the near-term, and to the extent that's possible, of course, but in the intermediate and longer-term, economic growth and advancement is going to continue to mean embracing new technologies and modes of production that decrease the use of human labor, which tends to be extremely inefficient. It would be good if the GOP didn't play dumb to this. It doesn't strike me as a smart long term political strategy to continue pandering to people who think they can replicate the economy of the 1960s going forward.
Furthermore, is the government just going to give people money for nothing?
Probably. It already does, except most of it goes to people who don't really need it, i.e. people who have lots of assets they could consume instead of getting handouts from government.
Does any of this really sound like an economy that you want?
Ideally no, but a lot of aspects of it are inevitable, and it would be good if the GOP didn't feign denial about it. We can see how they vote and they more often than not they go along with expanding entitlements to things. Even their PPACA repeal bill preserves the very things about PPACA that established health care as
more of an entitlement, not less.
Why should anyone support moving towards a system that is entirely built on government dependence? Even if you're right that work is becoming obsolete, there is no way that I can see that your idea is the way to go towards a new economy.
I don't necessarily want to intentionally foster dependence, but it will crop up all on its own, unavoidably, if we embrace future-oriented and growth-oriented modes of production. The readiness to abandon less efficient work in favor of more efficient work is the only real way to grow our economy because it will keep us on the leading edge of human advancement. Promoting economics that "create jobs" is great, but if we cling to a foregone imaginary ideal in which everyone has a stable gainful job and prospers, we're invariably going to be clinging to less efficient means of production, will end up allowing or even encouraging bull**** government jobs, Keynesian jobs (digging up buried bank notes in abandoned coal mines), New Deal-esque make-work, just to keep up the pretense that our own human labor runs the economy and provides for our needs.
The social conservatism crap is killing the GOP. Too many young, educated and intelligent voters flock to the Democratic Party because they're turned off by the constant dwelling on these stupid, petty social, sexual and religious types of issues. If the GOP pivots away from that tired crap, and begins appealing more to science, technology, reason, pragmatism, and finds a credible economic message, one that could be supported and articulated by actual economists, they would sweep the rug out from the Democratic Party. The DNC would fail to have a coherent position on much of anything anymore.
