Many argue about the need to protect/boost agriculture and industry. Those are declining areas of the economy, especially when it comes to jobs.

Yet little advocacy for making it cheaper to buy services and more expensive to buy goods? Even though most workers are employed in the service sector, and have been for some time.

@LeoSammallahti I find it unclear what you are getting at outside of the lobbying power of big ag/industry. Advocacy for cheaper services, but more expensive goods? Does that benefit the service worker?

@lwriemen @LeoSammallahti

I am similarly unsure of the intention here. Leo, are you making a lightweight economy argument, that the service sector permits economic growth with less resource use, while combining that with the observation that we're mostly a service sector economy anyway so why not?

@lwriemen @LeoSammallahti

I don't have a clear opinion one way or another on the idea of services stimulus (which I think is what you are arguing for), but I do think that if we intelligently redesigned agriculture and industry there would be more small scale production of necessary goods, which I think would tend to shift the job market away from services.

@dynamic @lwriemen

We should shift consumption away from buying material things and towards buying services.

Generally services are more environmentally friendly (depends ofc, spas are not for example).

I don't understand what makes this a lightweight argument?

@LeoSammallahti @dynamic Services cheaper equals lower salaries for service workers or cost of overhead reductions. I assume goods means nonessential goods or the service worker gets a possible double negative impact.

@lwriemen @dynamic

How would reducing the tax wedge for service workers reduce their salaries? Wouldn't they get more money if we reduced their taxes?

@lwriemen @dynamic

For a concrete example, if Finland would do like NZ and abolish all agricultural subsidies & tariffs, it would mean we could give an average of 1225 euro tax cut for every wage-earner every year, and we could do it progressively.

Wage earners would now have more money to spend, and it would be cheaper to hire someone to do something for you.

How would this be "trickle down" or reduce salaries for service workers?

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@LeoSammallahti @dynamic
"Wage earners would now have more money to spend, and it would be cheaper to hire someone to do something for you."

Change "Wage earners" to "Business owners" (or maybe "Job creators"[sic]) and you have the very basis of the argument for trickle down economics.

The crux of the issue is how they choose to spend that money. Assuming "wage earner" is someone in a middle to lower income level, then tax cuts are likely to go back into the economy.

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