Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Then we can talk about addressing unemployment. It might not even need addressing. The whole point of technology and the industrial revolution was, at some point, we were going to run out of work in a society that is practically post scarcity. It was at some level that a normal work week was going to be 20 hours instead of 40.
No it isn't. Your job didn't exist 25 years ago. Technology doesn't reduce jobs, it makes jobs more productive. That additional productivity increases quality of life because more shit can get done.
If I have a heart attack tomorrow or am diagnosed with cancer, I have a much better chance of living because people work in hospitals and doing medical research and manufacturing drugs. When I leave work tonight, I can get home because people maintain infrastructure, people sold me gas, people sold me a car. Then I can put up my feet and watch Netflix or play a vidja because people do jobs that enable the generation of power, the maintenance of power and data infrastructure, write software to deliver content over networks, generate entertainment content, build, sell and deliver couches and a million other things we expect day to day.
We only have all this stuff because people do shit. If I order a pizza, it gets to my house because that's at least two people's job. They are only able to do that because people deliver ingredients to the restaurant, generate power to the restaurant, maintain an international financial system that lets me wave a plastic card in their general direction to transfer payment, sell gasoline to power their car, etc etc etc. Its all is interdependent.
Yeah maybe in the current decades there will be drones delivering my pizza such that the number of people to maintain, design and operate the drones will be less than the number of pizza delivery guys now. The point of technological advance is not for those guys to now sit at home, but for them to do something else productive. Then we societally have both pizza delivery and whatever else they're doing. That's where growth comes from.
Putting aside that there hasn't been any substantially sized pilot programs that would provide a reasonable model for a state level program let alone a national one, that's simply untrue and any reading on the negative income tax experiments of the 60s and 70s in the US or MINCOME in Canada would disprove it.
As far as I can tell, the MINCOME trials went pretty well in Canada; it disincentivized work, but weakly
It didn't cause widespread havok but the limited analysis we have does show reduced labor participation when overall labor participation was increasing pretty substantially (due to demographic and gender changes largely). The payments also only brought the 1290 families/individuals in the experiment up to 50% of current the poverty rate (adjusting for inflation of course). There's only data on 590 of them (because a little more than half didn't fill out the surveys) so there's also a sample size question. They showed single digit % reduction in labor participation (~5%) instead of the low double digit rate in the US (~12%) but thats still non-trivial. I also expect if an actual living wage was provided, it would have had a greater effect.
I mean it even came up in this thread because people would rather not have to work their current job. That's a pretty good indicator of the expectations of such a program as a disincentive to work.
I can't figure why you're bringing up the trendline in employment participation that existed at the time; it has nothing to do with whether the program caused a significant dip below then-current employment numbers.
It also looks like you're fudging the numbers to make the effect look larger than it was. It's true that unmarried women reduced their labor participation by 5 percent, but the overall effect was smaller.
University of Manitoba economists Derek Hum and Wayne Simpson analyzed labour supply or work disincentive issues in Mincome during the 1980s and published their results in a series of papers and a monograph. Their results showed a small impact on labor markets, with working hours dropping one percent for men, three percent for married women, and five percent for unmarried women.
kedinik on
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
I do think that one of the big problems about talking about MINCOME or UBI in a vacuum absent of considerations for automation. Granted, I know this is not an automation thread, but you really can't talk about one without the other. Full UBI will not be economically or politically viable until wide-spread automation has 1) made unemployment sky-rocket, and 2) provided a source rich enough for taxation.
A lot of talk about people on UBI not wanting jobs ignores the fact that by the time UBI is a reality, there may not even be traditional jobs as we conceive of them available.
+4
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
I mean it even came up in this thread because people would rather not have to work their current job. That's a pretty good indicator of the expectations of such a program as a disincentive to work.
Well, what like @bowen was saying, maybe that's not the people's fault as much as it is the job. If (due to UBI) no one needs to work at Horrible Employer X to eat, then the owners will need to provide incentives to work there beyond "nyahaha, you must work here to eat!" aka the Wal-Mart employee loyalty program.
If they can't do that and they fail, well that's the beauty of a free market. If we're allowing "disruption" in the form of increasingly drastic automation and "the gig economy" to force businesses to adapt or die, then there's no reason why we can't do the same for UBI.
It would be expensive though. My back-of-the-napkin math says that giving 25 grand to every adult in the U.S. would cost about 6 trillion and change. Not to mention all of the additional costs associated with it- even more Trump-style border enforcement (because once we start handing out money everyone is going to try and get in), higher Medicare costs, making sure everyone doesn't just raise prices by the equivalent of 25 grand, etc.
But would it help unemployment? Yes. If your business can no longer rely on a source of ultra-cheap labor to work in horrific working conditions to keep costs down, they'll either have to raise wages or better working conditions in an effort to attract workers. Both sound good to me.
+4
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Then we can talk about addressing unemployment. It might not even need addressing. The whole point of technology and the industrial revolution was, at some point, we were going to run out of work in a society that is practically post scarcity. It was at some level that a normal work week was going to be 20 hours instead of 40.
No it isn't. Your job didn't exist 25 years ago. Technology doesn't reduce jobs, it makes jobs more productive. That additional productivity increases quality of life because more shit can get done.
If I have a heart attack tomorrow or am diagnosed with cancer, I have a much better chance of living because people work in hospitals and doing medical research and manufacturing drugs. When I leave work tonight, I can get home because people maintain infrastructure, people sold me gas, people sold me a car. Then I can put up my feet and watch Netflix or play a vidja because people do jobs that enable the generation of power, the maintenance of power and data infrastructure, write software to deliver content over networks, generate entertainment content, build, sell and deliver couches and a million other things we expect day to day.
We only have all this stuff because people do shit. If I order a pizza, it gets to my house because that's at least two people's job. They are only able to do that because people deliver ingredients to the restaurant, generate power to the restaurant, maintain an international financial system that lets me wave a plastic card in their general direction to transfer payment, sell gasoline to power their car, etc etc etc. Its all is interdependent.
Yeah maybe in the current decades there will be drones delivering my pizza such that the number of people to maintain, design and operate the drones will be less than the number of pizza delivery guys now. The point of technological advance is not for those guys to now sit at home, but for them to do something else productive. Then we societally have both pizza delivery and whatever else they're doing. That's where growth comes from.
My career has existed for a little more than a century. Arguably, not quite the same as what I do now, but, the early forms of it, anyways. I'm not really sure where you're coming from with this post. Yes we need those people, and yes they will probably have to get paid well to continue existing? Your pizza boy and waiters will probably be getting a living wage because they need to be paid that, because they no longer need to struggle to make ends meet anymore.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
What if there's no longer work for 80% of the population to do anymore?
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
In a lot of cases, IMO, those long lists of requirements are really there just to limit/thin the number of applicants down to something HR can skim through and/or interview in a reasonable amount of time. The labor oversupply is that bad (in some fields) right now.
Not in Entry level IT. We want basic computer troubleshooting skills and some technical mental habits, and we get resumes from "literally no IT at all" to "15yrs SysAdmin"... but we get very few actual entry level apps.
You say this.
But in most cases, your employer excluded here I guess, entry level wants 4 years of experience and a half a decade worth of skills. This is the unfortunate side effect of "everyone has a degree, so..." and "~30% of people are unemployed or underemployed" which is why you're seeing 15 year sysadmins in your queue.
My position is entry level!
During the interview the expressed reservations that I hadn't worked on a sonicwall or meraki before
+8
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
What if there's no longer work for 80% of the population to do anymore?
Interesting problem, but not one that I am likely to see in my lifetime.
Still even eliminating all of the entitlement programs there is a 1.5 trillion dollar funding gap. It's a tough sell.
This is unlikely to happen due to how weak unions are, but before UBI I'd like to see another gradual lowering of the standard workweek like we saw with the FLSA nearly a decade ago. Unfortunately that seems to largely have been a perfect storm that simultaneously had all of the necessary components acting towards a single goal: CEO support by major American company, strong workers unions, sympathetic White House, and it still took several decades. You see it get brought up every now and again, but the corporate environment, which is really going to be the ones to convince, have been pretty steadily treading water the past several decades; content with profits through cost cutting, rather than innovation
In a lot of cases, IMO, those long lists of requirements are really there just to limit/thin the number of applicants down to something HR can skim through and/or interview in a reasonable amount of time. The labor oversupply is that bad (in some fields) right now.
Not in Entry level IT. We want basic computer troubleshooting skills and some technical mental habits, and we get resumes from "literally no IT at all" to "15yrs SysAdmin"... but we get very few actual entry level apps.
You say this.
But in most cases, your employer excluded here I guess, entry level wants 4 years of experience and a half a decade worth of skills. This is the unfortunate side effect of "everyone has a degree, so..." and "~30% of people are unemployed or underemployed" which is why you're seeing 15 year sysadmins in your queue.
My position is entry level!
During the interview the expressed reservations that I hadn't worked on a sonicwall or meraki before
Congratulations, you're actually a senior level system administrator.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
The pilot programs for UBI have not demonstrated a substantial impact on employment figures. What evidence do you have to present that substantiates your speculation about how it would 'definitely discourage work'?
Also, how do you intend to square an acknowledgement that 1/3 of the U.S. population is not currently participating in the labor force with your claim that the U.S. is doing just fine & dandy?
Putting aside that there hasn't been any substantially sized pilot programs that would provide a reasonable model for a state level program let alone a national one, that's simply untrue and any reading on the negative income tax experiments of the 60s and 70s in the US or MINCOME in Canada would disprove it.
And I say that because I understand what a normal labor participation rate is, especially for prime working age brackets.
You do this a lot: talk out of your ass and then when asked to provide sources that back-up what you've written, you just claim you know best even though you're not an expert.
Put up or shut up. Where's the data to support your assertion that UBI creates a substantive disincentive for work? No, anecdotal claims from an Internet forum don't count as data points.
Multiple pilot programs were created in a variety of countries. If what you're saying is true, you should be able to substantiate your claim by pulling relevant data from those studies instead of fudging numbers and copping-out with, 'Oh but this is just common sense!'
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
Reading over the OP, though, I'm starting to think of some tertiary effects of a UBI
Funnily enough, I think a UBI would help the the most, the exact type of person who would be most against it; person #1. Small towns would absolutely be revitalized with the sudden influx of income; businesses would open in what would now be considered mostly untapped real estate in a hungry market.
Would those convicted of a crime continue to accrue their basic income whilst serving out their sentence? How about probation?
What level of citizenship would be required to be eligible for a UBI? What about people with dual citizenships? If the charge toward automation is really as inevitable as we keep saying, other countries might have to implement similar measures. If someone splits their living time between the US and the UK, and both have basic income policies, how would it be reconciled? What about someone who does work in another country?
I do think that one of the big problems about talking about MINCOME or UBI in a vacuum absent of considerations for automation. Granted, I know this is not an automation thread, but you really can't talk about one without the other. Full UBI will not be economically or politically viable until wide-spread automation has 1) made unemployment sky-rocket, and 2) provided a source rich enough for taxation.
A lot of talk about people on UBI not wanting jobs ignores the fact that by the time UBI is a reality, there may not even be traditional jobs as we conceive of them available.
Basically, we're in a really shitty spot right now with businesses trying to increase automation, with the government trying to stop it because they want a full workforce, and a population that places an enormous amount of self worth on the job they do, so they all want jobs, but only certain jobs. So unemployment is high, because the only way for businesses to avoid justifying total automation is for labor to be cheaper, so the government allows them to do so, so the jobs that are available aren't jobs that people want to do.
+5
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
And the reason we are one of the richest countries in the world is because 159 million people wake up and go to work. I would like to continue to incentivize that. I would also like to make shitty jobs less shitty too.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
And the reason we are one of the richest countries in the world is because 159 million people wake up and go to work. I would like to continue to incentivize that. I would also like to make shitty jobs less shitty too.
Probably not a good justification. I'm sure India and China have many more people that "wake up and go to work."
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
And the reason we are one of the richest countries in the world is because 159 million people wake up and go to work. I would like to continue to incentivize that. I would also like to make shitty jobs less shitty too.
The incentivization is still there. It just doesn't include starving in the street.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
And the reason we are one of the richest countries in the world is because 159 million people wake up and go to work. I would like to continue to incentivize that. I would also like to make shitty jobs less shitty too.
I think the disincentive to work is overstated. If anything, we'll just see a major shift of employment from full-time to part-time, or a blanket reduction in the workweek to 30 hours or whatever.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
A certain percentage of the population is currently living at just above the poverty level by performing unfulfilling, meaningless make work. It's not really much different.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
And the reason we are one of the richest countries in the world is because 159 million people wake up and go to work. I would like to continue to incentivize that. I would also like to make shitty jobs less shitty too.
I don't think this follows, a country's gdp per capita let alone the happiness of its citizenry has little to do with how much it enables "leeches" or whatever (obviously it's easy to straw man up how this could be done, give everyone $100k a year and a pony and you bankrupt the nation)
There's a fair bit of thought that perhaps the most efficient way to provide equal opportunities, reduce crimes, improve health, and increase educational outcomes is to just give everyone a flat income - this allows you to eliminate most of the local and federal safety net as its now redundant, it eliminates concern over fraud because everyone is getting it, and since its taxed progressively the majority of the public would see a slight increase in their income
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
A certain percentage of the population is currently living at just above the poverty level by performing unfulfilling, meaningless make work. It's not really much different.
Well yeah, that's the point. I doubt society will ever be able to do away entirely with people living in poverty. I just see so reason to also make it as unpleasant as possible.
In about seven years I'll have the equivalent of guaranteed income via my pension. It'll be just under 30k a year and while I probably could live off of just that I know it's not a lifestyle I'd want. I'll just be working a job I want more that doesn't pay as much.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
And the reason we are one of the richest countries in the world is because 159 million people wake up and go to work. I would like to continue to incentivize that. I would also like to make shitty jobs less shitty too.
I think the disincentive to work is overstated. If anything, we'll just see a major shift of employment from full-time to part-time, or a blanket reduction in the workweek to 30 hours or whatever.
We'd also see service sector jobs having to treat their workers like human beings
I don't have the hard evidence to back it up and obviously there's work that's miserable and draining. But anecdotally there are a lot of people who psychologically handle not having required work poorly. What you can find sustaining as a hobby isn't always sustaining as your kind of sole source of self-worth.
Maybe what's needed is aggressive eudaimonia so people are better equipped for self-oriented activity without external reinforcement or need.
So, more anecdota for the pile: I have a Stem based trades degree. Worked for few years in industry, got the wife through her degree, she started a small business while I worked, and eventually we got to the point where i quit and we both run the business. We make stuff for games (which is why I am being light on details, we're a gaming company and I don't want to run afoul of self promotion rules) and run machinery to make product. After two years of running the gear, I effectively got everything set up to the point where I automated my whole job so that my wife can handle it all herself.
I got so bored being underemployed that I got depressed, and it hit my self esteem HARD. Which is crazy, but where I found myself. My material needs are taken care of, I own the means of production and have a semi-robotic setup to do work for me. And all I want is to work, because the American work ethic apparently owns my soul. I have hobbies that are very satisfying on many levels, but I want to feel productive. To fix it I'm going back to school for an advanced science 4 year degree starting in a couple of weeks, so that I can hopefully find a job and contribute to society again in a meaningful way.
When we talk about UBI as a solution, we need to understand that for a great many people work provides MEANING to them. That people want to contribute to society in a real way, and simply have your ends meet isn't enough. Its certainly a start, and someone who is living on the proceeds of robotic labor (The future is weird yo) I wouldn't go back, but its only the first step in terms of building a society based on not having to work.
Tldr: I have the most first world of problems with robotic labor providing for me, but feel that discussion of unemployment is more complicated that just providing a living, people WANT to work, because at least in the states the cultural value is that work is good for you, and any solutions to unemployment have to take human psychological needs and cultural values into account.
Eh, I think that this is pretty rare amongst people who are rich enough to sustain hobbies and activities. Go dig a garden and grow food. That's what 95% of all humans did for the last gen thousand years. If that isn't enough excitement for you as a hobby it's you who are the odd duck, not the system of provision which is wrong.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
And the reason we are one of the richest countries in the world is because 159 million people wake up and go to work. I would like to continue to incentivize that. I would also like to make shitty jobs less shitty too.
I think the disincentive to work is overstated. If anything, we'll just see a major shift of employment from full-time to part-time, or a blanket reduction in the workweek to 30 hours or whatever.
Which we could probably do now. Make the 32 hour work week a reality, we all know it could all get done in that amount of time.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
And the reason we are one of the richest countries in the world is because 159 million people wake up and go to work. I would like to continue to incentivize that. I would also like to make shitty jobs less shitty too.
I think the disincentive to work is overstated. If anything, we'll just see a major shift of employment from full-time to part-time, or a blanket reduction in the workweek to 30 hours or whatever.
Which we could probably do now. Make the 32 hour work week a reality, we all know it could all get done in that amount of time.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
Why would I support paying significantly higher taxes for people who are able but not willing to work? That idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
And the reason we are one of the richest countries in the world is because 159 million people wake up and go to work. I would like to continue to incentivize that. I would also like to make shitty jobs less shitty too.
I think the disincentive to work is overstated. If anything, we'll just see a major shift of employment from full-time to part-time, or a blanket reduction in the workweek to 30 hours or whatever.
Which we could probably do now. Make the 32 hour work week a reality, we all know it could all get done in that amount of time.
We could absolutely do it. Someone who matters just also needs to make the case that we should do it without also effectively cutting pay by 20%.
Reading over the OP, though, I'm starting to think of some tertiary effects of a UBI
Funnily enough, I think a UBI would help the the most, the exact type of person who would be most against it; person #1. Small towns would absolutely be revitalized with the sudden influx of income; businesses would open in what would now be considered mostly untapped real estate in a hungry market.
Would those convicted of a crime continue to accrue their basic income whilst serving out their sentence? How about probation?
What level of citizenship would be required to be eligible for a UBI? What about people with dual citizenships? If the charge toward automation is really as inevitable as we keep saying, other countries might have to implement similar measures. If someone splits their living time between the US and the UK, and both have basic income policies, how would it be reconciled? What about someone who does work in another country?
Answers to questions, from my opinion:
- Convicted criminals lose their UBI while incarcerated.
- Full citizens only
- Dual citizenship must be abandoned.
- overseas workers accrue a generous % of their UBI into a savings account, payable when they re-establish residency.
Reading over the OP, though, I'm starting to think of some tertiary effects of a UBI
Funnily enough, I think a UBI would help the the most, the exact type of person who would be most against it; person #1. Small towns would absolutely be revitalized with the sudden influx of income; businesses would open in what would now be considered mostly untapped real estate in a hungry market.
Would those convicted of a crime continue to accrue their basic income whilst serving out their sentence? How about probation?
What level of citizenship would be required to be eligible for a UBI? What about people with dual citizenships? If the charge toward automation is really as inevitable as we keep saying, other countries might have to implement similar measures. If someone splits their living time between the US and the UK, and both have basic income policies, how would it be reconciled? What about someone who does work in another country?
Answers to questions, from my opinion:
- Convicted criminals lose their UBI while incarcerated.
- Full citizens only
- Dual citizenship must be abandoned.
- overseas workers accrue a generous % of their UBI into a savings account, payable when they re-establish residency.
I can agree to this.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Reading over the OP, though, I'm starting to think of some tertiary effects of a UBI
Funnily enough, I think a UBI would help the the most, the exact type of person who would be most against it; person #1. Small towns would absolutely be revitalized with the sudden influx of income; businesses would open in what would now be considered mostly untapped real estate in a hungry market.
Would those convicted of a crime continue to accrue their basic income whilst serving out their sentence? How about probation?
What level of citizenship would be required to be eligible for a UBI? What about people with dual citizenships? If the charge toward automation is really as inevitable as we keep saying, other countries might have to implement similar measures. If someone splits their living time between the US and the UK, and both have basic income policies, how would it be reconciled? What about someone who does work in another country?
Answers to questions, from my opinion:
- Convicted criminals lose their UBI while incarcerated.
- Full citizens only
- Dual citizenship must be abandoned.
- overseas workers accrue a generous % of their UBI into a savings account, payable when they re-establish residency.
I can agree to this.
I have thoughts on this but I think we're possibly starting to get into separate thread territory here.
As far as automation's affect on unemployment and people's insistence that it doesn't destroy jobs and instead opens up new opportunities.
I would like proof of that within the last decade.
I say our modern technological leaps destroy so many jobs that any new opportunities opened up by the new technology are not numerous enough to counteract the damage.
Like when we make a technological leap we don't just destroy a few jobs at the plant like mechanical looms did at textile factories. Our technological leaps destroy the whole fuckin factory or reduces it to a skeleton crew.
We are getting to a point where 3-10 people can do the work of tens of thousands, and there's no real way to staunch that bleeding.
+3
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
edited February 2017
oh crap wrong thread...full employment rules. Looking for jobs is the worst
That's the end that I see. There will be the ownership class: those who own the robots, and then everyone else. No one will care about a meritocracy anymore. Doctors, accountants, attorneys, engineers, techies, soldiers, generals all will be replaced; and unless they own robots of their own, they will starve.
Of course, I'm not completely prone to despair since we're probably still a few generations away from Doctors and techies and generals being replaced at least.
DisruptedCapitalist on
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
and if the benefits of that were evenly distributed, it wouldn't be a problem.
but, of course, they're not and never will be.
the same is true at this point on the curve. most of those improvements in productivity and profit have gone right into the pockets of the ruling class, because the workers have to be kept busy or they'll get ideas.
Reading over the OP, though, I'm starting to think of some tertiary effects of a UBI
Funnily enough, I think a UBI would help the the most, the exact type of person who would be most against it; person #1. Small towns would absolutely be revitalized with the sudden influx of income; businesses would open in what would now be considered mostly untapped real estate in a hungry market.
Would those convicted of a crime continue to accrue their basic income whilst serving out their sentence? How about probation?
What level of citizenship would be required to be eligible for a UBI? What about people with dual citizenships? If the charge toward automation is really as inevitable as we keep saying, other countries might have to implement similar measures. If someone splits their living time between the US and the UK, and both have basic income policies, how would it be reconciled? What about someone who does work in another country?
Answers to questions, from my opinion:
- Convicted criminals lose their UBI while incarcerated.
- Full citizens only
- Dual citizenship must be abandoned.
- overseas workers accrue a generous % of their UBI into a savings account, payable when they re-establish residency.
Sounds good to me with the exception of dual citizenship being abandoned. I'm not a huge fan of forcing people to give up dual citizenship.
I'd imagine it would be in both countries best interest to say "whoever has person X for the majority of the month pays the benefit" or something.
That's the end that I see. There will be the ownership class: those who own the robots, and then everyone else. No one will care about a meritocracy anymore. Doctors, accountants, attorneys, engineers, techies, soldiers, generals all will be replaced; and unless they own robots of their own, they will starve.
Of course, I'm not completely prone to despair since we're probably still a few generations away from Doctors and techies and generals being replaced at least.
To what end though?
Suppose we remove war from the picture; because the end I see is a resource shortage, followed by war, followed by regrowth, ad nauseum until someone nukes the place or otherwise tips the world into an unrecoverable state.
In this circumstance, the ownership class has no-one to produce stuff for.
If vast majorities of the population cannot find a job, then they cannot buy food, let alone consumer products.
Suddenly you have automated factories producing goods for a shrinking consumer base.
You can potentially keep growing your footprint on the world, but at this point it doesn't really matter.
Whatever you invest in loses money, or at least you make a thing and no-one can buy it from you or could produce it for themselves so it's meaningless.
So they will find something to produce for.
If that's not war, then it's "altruistically" uplifting communities, so that they become relied on for stuff again and so that their big robot factories have a purpose.
Like at this point, they would control all the resources, which are worth nothing because no-one else can buy them.
So they need to employ people so that the demand comes back so that they have worth.
... I don't think we'll get to a point where we're always been at war with Eurasia with robots, but it is a third possibility.
I just think our resources are finite.
So common people dying of starvation whilst robot armies are unendingly churned out to battle for their owners would still require the robots to be unceasing produced, and for one side to not just win or otherwise utterly destroy the robot factories of the opposition.
Reading over the OP, though, I'm starting to think of some tertiary effects of a UBI
Funnily enough, I think a UBI would help the the most, the exact type of person who would be most against it; person #1. Small towns would absolutely be revitalized with the sudden influx of income; businesses would open in what would now be considered mostly untapped real estate in a hungry market.
Would those convicted of a crime continue to accrue their basic income whilst serving out their sentence? How about probation?
What level of citizenship would be required to be eligible for a UBI? What about people with dual citizenships? If the charge toward automation is really as inevitable as we keep saying, other countries might have to implement similar measures. If someone splits their living time between the US and the UK, and both have basic income policies, how would it be reconciled? What about someone who does work in another country?
Answers to questions, from my opinion:
- Convicted criminals lose their UBI while incarcerated.
- Full citizens only
- Dual citizenship must be abandoned.
- overseas workers accrue a generous % of their UBI into a savings account, payable when they re-establish residency.
I would suggest that there should be some way for prisoners to earn a portion of UBI, possibly up to half, through a combination of good behavior and prison work programs. Having a reserve of cash they could lean on when they are released while UBI starts to flow again should theoretically help reduce prison churn.
I also don't see the need to require revocation of dual citizenship, but their primary place of residence over the previous year should be in America and they should affirm that they are only receiving UBI from us for the year in question. I realize there will be people who try to cheat this, but it doesn't seem like it would be hard to spot.
FF XIV - Qih'to Furishu (on Siren), Battle.Net - Ilpala#1975
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
In this circumstance, the ownership class has no-one to produce stuff for.
If vast majorities of the population cannot find a job, then they cannot buy food, let alone consumer products.
Suddenly you have automated factories producing goods for a shrinking consumer base.
You can potentially keep growing your footprint on the world, but at this point it doesn't really matter.
Whatever you invest in loses money, or at least you make a thing and no-one can buy it from you or could produce it for themselves so it's meaningless.
Automation and job killing won't be such an obvious, overnight thing, however. It will be gradual, and is already happening. But, it's happening at a pace so that most people don't see it. They keep automating because it increases profits. Profits will decline due to lack of demand, due to unemployment. However, it's going to be a gradual thing over 20-40 years, so a lot of these owners probably won't put two and two together, or start an automation arms war with competitors to eke out the profit they need to stay afloat.
Skilled and professional jobs are already being automated. I'm a non-practicing attorney, but one of my friends still practicing in a BigLaw job says that his firm just licensed an AI that can review M&A contracts 100 times faster and more accurately than humans. They are basically going to replace dozens of baby associate lawyers with this AI. The senior associates or junior partners just review the output, just as they would review the work done by the baby associates.
In this circumstance, the ownership class has no-one to produce stuff for.
If vast majorities of the population cannot find a job, then they cannot buy food, let alone consumer products.
Suddenly you have automated factories producing goods for a shrinking consumer base.
You can potentially keep growing your footprint on the world, but at this point it doesn't really matter.
Whatever you invest in loses money, or at least you make a thing and no-one can buy it from you or could produce it for themselves so it's meaningless.
Automation and job killing won't be such an obvious, overnight thing, however. It will be gradual, and is already happening. But, it's happening at a pace so that most people don't see it. They keep automating because it increases profits. Profits will decline due to lack of demand, due to unemployment. However, it's going to be a gradual thing over 20-40 years, so a lot of these owners probably won't put two and two together, or start an automation arms war with competitors to eke out the profit they need to stay afloat.
Skilled and professional jobs are already being automated. I'm a non-practicing attorney, but one of my friends still practicing in a BigLaw job says that his firm just licensed an AI that can review M&A contracts 100 times faster and more accurately than humans. They are basically going to replace dozens of baby associate lawyers with this AI. The senior associates or junior partners just review the output, just as they would review the work done by the baby associates.
And this is the real trouble here.
Those senior associates and junior partners will likely be fine for a while.
Unfortunately because we are replacing all those baby associates there's no one to move up.
Then the lowest level position people are trying to hire for requires so much more training and schooling than before. Even entering the field requires such a commitment of time, effort, and money that it is a giant gamble as to if you will even enjoy the work you are lining yourself up to do that not many people will take the gamble. Even worse, while some might realize you still need to hire baby associates so they can move up the number of positions available at such a level will be so limited that it will be a completely unreasonable job market for recent grads to jump into.
Posts
So what if a percentage of the population is satisfied living unemployed at just above the poverty level?
If I have a heart attack tomorrow or am diagnosed with cancer, I have a much better chance of living because people work in hospitals and doing medical research and manufacturing drugs. When I leave work tonight, I can get home because people maintain infrastructure, people sold me gas, people sold me a car. Then I can put up my feet and watch Netflix or play a vidja because people do jobs that enable the generation of power, the maintenance of power and data infrastructure, write software to deliver content over networks, generate entertainment content, build, sell and deliver couches and a million other things we expect day to day.
We only have all this stuff because people do shit. If I order a pizza, it gets to my house because that's at least two people's job. They are only able to do that because people deliver ingredients to the restaurant, generate power to the restaurant, maintain an international financial system that lets me wave a plastic card in their general direction to transfer payment, sell gasoline to power their car, etc etc etc. Its all is interdependent.
Yeah maybe in the current decades there will be drones delivering my pizza such that the number of people to maintain, design and operate the drones will be less than the number of pizza delivery guys now. The point of technological advance is not for those guys to now sit at home, but for them to do something else productive. Then we societally have both pizza delivery and whatever else they're doing. That's where growth comes from.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I can't figure why you're bringing up the trendline in employment participation that existed at the time; it has nothing to do with whether the program caused a significant dip below then-current employment numbers.
It also looks like you're fudging the numbers to make the effect look larger than it was. It's true that unmarried women reduced their labor participation by 5 percent, but the overall effect was smaller.
A lot of talk about people on UBI not wanting jobs ignores the fact that by the time UBI is a reality, there may not even be traditional jobs as we conceive of them available.
If they can't do that and they fail, well that's the beauty of a free market. If we're allowing "disruption" in the form of increasingly drastic automation and "the gig economy" to force businesses to adapt or die, then there's no reason why we can't do the same for UBI.
It would be expensive though. My back-of-the-napkin math says that giving 25 grand to every adult in the U.S. would cost about 6 trillion and change. Not to mention all of the additional costs associated with it- even more Trump-style border enforcement (because once we start handing out money everyone is going to try and get in), higher Medicare costs, making sure everyone doesn't just raise prices by the equivalent of 25 grand, etc.
But would it help unemployment? Yes. If your business can no longer rely on a source of ultra-cheap labor to work in horrific working conditions to keep costs down, they'll either have to raise wages or better working conditions in an effort to attract workers. Both sound good to me.
My career has existed for a little more than a century. Arguably, not quite the same as what I do now, but, the early forms of it, anyways. I'm not really sure where you're coming from with this post. Yes we need those people, and yes they will probably have to get paid well to continue existing? Your pizza boy and waiters will probably be getting a living wage because they need to be paid that, because they no longer need to struggle to make ends meet anymore.
What if there's no longer work for 80% of the population to do anymore?
My position is entry level!
During the interview the expressed reservations that I hadn't worked on a sonicwall or meraki before
Still even eliminating all of the entitlement programs there is a 1.5 trillion dollar funding gap. It's a tough sell.
Congratulations, you're actually a senior level system administrator.
You do this a lot: talk out of your ass and then when asked to provide sources that back-up what you've written, you just claim you know best even though you're not an expert.
Put up or shut up. Where's the data to support your assertion that UBI creates a substantive disincentive for work? No, anecdotal claims from an Internet forum don't count as data points.
Multiple pilot programs were created in a variety of countries. If what you're saying is true, you should be able to substantiate your claim by pulling relevant data from those studies instead of fudging numbers and copping-out with, 'Oh but this is just common sense!'
Because we're one of the richest countries in the world and I contend the unemployed not having to choose between starvation or shitty work is more important than the bad taste in your mouth.
Funnily enough, I think a UBI would help the the most, the exact type of person who would be most against it; person #1. Small towns would absolutely be revitalized with the sudden influx of income; businesses would open in what would now be considered mostly untapped real estate in a hungry market.
Would those convicted of a crime continue to accrue their basic income whilst serving out their sentence? How about probation?
What level of citizenship would be required to be eligible for a UBI? What about people with dual citizenships? If the charge toward automation is really as inevitable as we keep saying, other countries might have to implement similar measures. If someone splits their living time between the US and the UK, and both have basic income policies, how would it be reconciled? What about someone who does work in another country?
Basically, we're in a really shitty spot right now with businesses trying to increase automation, with the government trying to stop it because they want a full workforce, and a population that places an enormous amount of self worth on the job they do, so they all want jobs, but only certain jobs. So unemployment is high, because the only way for businesses to avoid justifying total automation is for labor to be cheaper, so the government allows them to do so, so the jobs that are available aren't jobs that people want to do.
Probably not a good justification. I'm sure India and China have many more people that "wake up and go to work."
The incentivization is still there. It just doesn't include starving in the street.
I think the disincentive to work is overstated. If anything, we'll just see a major shift of employment from full-time to part-time, or a blanket reduction in the workweek to 30 hours or whatever.
A certain percentage of the population is currently living at just above the poverty level by performing unfulfilling, meaningless make work. It's not really much different.
I don't think this follows, a country's gdp per capita let alone the happiness of its citizenry has little to do with how much it enables "leeches" or whatever (obviously it's easy to straw man up how this could be done, give everyone $100k a year and a pony and you bankrupt the nation)
There's a fair bit of thought that perhaps the most efficient way to provide equal opportunities, reduce crimes, improve health, and increase educational outcomes is to just give everyone a flat income - this allows you to eliminate most of the local and federal safety net as its now redundant, it eliminates concern over fraud because everyone is getting it, and since its taxed progressively the majority of the public would see a slight increase in their income
Well yeah, that's the point. I doubt society will ever be able to do away entirely with people living in poverty. I just see so reason to also make it as unpleasant as possible.
In about seven years I'll have the equivalent of guaranteed income via my pension. It'll be just under 30k a year and while I probably could live off of just that I know it's not a lifestyle I'd want. I'll just be working a job I want more that doesn't pay as much.
We'd also see service sector jobs having to treat their workers like human beings
Eh, I think that this is pretty rare amongst people who are rich enough to sustain hobbies and activities. Go dig a garden and grow food. That's what 95% of all humans did for the last gen thousand years. If that isn't enough excitement for you as a hobby it's you who are the odd duck, not the system of provision which is wrong.
Which we could probably do now. Make the 32 hour work week a reality, we all know it could all get done in that amount of time.
We could absolutely do it. Someone who matters just also needs to make the case that we should do it without also effectively cutting pay by 20%.
Answers to questions, from my opinion:
- Convicted criminals lose their UBI while incarcerated.
- Full citizens only
- Dual citizenship must be abandoned.
- overseas workers accrue a generous % of their UBI into a savings account, payable when they re-establish residency.
I can agree to this.
I have thoughts on this but I think we're possibly starting to get into separate thread territory here.
I would like proof of that within the last decade.
I say our modern technological leaps destroy so many jobs that any new opportunities opened up by the new technology are not numerous enough to counteract the damage.
Like when we make a technological leap we don't just destroy a few jobs at the plant like mechanical looms did at textile factories. Our technological leaps destroy the whole fuckin factory or reduces it to a skeleton crew.
We are getting to a point where 3-10 people can do the work of tens of thousands, and there's no real way to staunch that bleeding.
Of course, I'm not completely prone to despair since we're probably still a few generations away from Doctors and techies and generals being replaced at least.
but, of course, they're not and never will be.
the same is true at this point on the curve. most of those improvements in productivity and profit have gone right into the pockets of the ruling class, because the workers have to be kept busy or they'll get ideas.
Sounds good to me with the exception of dual citizenship being abandoned. I'm not a huge fan of forcing people to give up dual citizenship.
I'd imagine it would be in both countries best interest to say "whoever has person X for the majority of the month pays the benefit" or something.
To what end though?
Suppose we remove war from the picture; because the end I see is a resource shortage, followed by war, followed by regrowth, ad nauseum until someone nukes the place or otherwise tips the world into an unrecoverable state.
In this circumstance, the ownership class has no-one to produce stuff for.
If vast majorities of the population cannot find a job, then they cannot buy food, let alone consumer products.
Suddenly you have automated factories producing goods for a shrinking consumer base.
You can potentially keep growing your footprint on the world, but at this point it doesn't really matter.
Whatever you invest in loses money, or at least you make a thing and no-one can buy it from you or could produce it for themselves so it's meaningless.
So they will find something to produce for.
If that's not war, then it's "altruistically" uplifting communities, so that they become relied on for stuff again and so that their big robot factories have a purpose.
Like at this point, they would control all the resources, which are worth nothing because no-one else can buy them.
So they need to employ people so that the demand comes back so that they have worth.
... I don't think we'll get to a point where we're always been at war with Eurasia with robots, but it is a third possibility.
I just think our resources are finite.
So common people dying of starvation whilst robot armies are unendingly churned out to battle for their owners would still require the robots to be unceasing produced, and for one side to not just win or otherwise utterly destroy the robot factories of the opposition.
I would suggest that there should be some way for prisoners to earn a portion of UBI, possibly up to half, through a combination of good behavior and prison work programs. Having a reserve of cash they could lean on when they are released while UBI starts to flow again should theoretically help reduce prison churn.
I also don't see the need to require revocation of dual citizenship, but their primary place of residence over the previous year should be in America and they should affirm that they are only receiving UBI from us for the year in question. I realize there will be people who try to cheat this, but it doesn't seem like it would be hard to spot.
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
Automation and job killing won't be such an obvious, overnight thing, however. It will be gradual, and is already happening. But, it's happening at a pace so that most people don't see it. They keep automating because it increases profits. Profits will decline due to lack of demand, due to unemployment. However, it's going to be a gradual thing over 20-40 years, so a lot of these owners probably won't put two and two together, or start an automation arms war with competitors to eke out the profit they need to stay afloat.
Skilled and professional jobs are already being automated. I'm a non-practicing attorney, but one of my friends still practicing in a BigLaw job says that his firm just licensed an AI that can review M&A contracts 100 times faster and more accurately than humans. They are basically going to replace dozens of baby associate lawyers with this AI. The senior associates or junior partners just review the output, just as they would review the work done by the baby associates.
And this is the real trouble here.
Those senior associates and junior partners will likely be fine for a while.
Unfortunately because we are replacing all those baby associates there's no one to move up.
Then the lowest level position people are trying to hire for requires so much more training and schooling than before. Even entering the field requires such a commitment of time, effort, and money that it is a giant gamble as to if you will even enjoy the work you are lining yourself up to do that not many people will take the gamble. Even worse, while some might realize you still need to hire baby associates so they can move up the number of positions available at such a level will be so limited that it will be a completely unreasonable job market for recent grads to jump into.