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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.
Steam | ART
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.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
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.
Oh hey! A knife!
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.