8 ms·

Right off the bat: >“We should not advance a policy that is premised on giving up on the possibility of workers’ remaining employed,” Jason Furman, chairman of

Right off the bat: >“We should not advance a policy that is premised on giving up on the possibility of workers’ remaining employed,” Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said Thursday in remarks at New York University. Isn't the idea that people could be employed doing anything on UBI (subject to the market demand - sans artificial restrictions)? As in, the exact opposite of what Furman claims is the premise of the UBI system?

ubernostrum 10y ago
Part of the issue is UBI poses a threat to established ways of doing things -- many businesses rely on the relative lack of social and labor mobility as a way to provide the continual supply of low-paid unskilled workers they want. The threat in UBI is that those workers would be able to take time out of the labor market and get education and training or even start their own businesses instead of settling for the "it's the only game in town" of working under the established model.
- cle 10y ago
  I've been skeptically positive towards UBI, but this sounds like a real problem with UBI, to me. Do you think there is merit to this concern?
  - ianai 10y ago
    If your strategy for employing labor includes anything other than the monetary recouperation for someone's time then your entire labor strategy is perverse.
  - iand 10y ago
    Can you clarify the question? It sounds like you think UBI's problem is that it removes the "continual supply of low-paid unskilled workers [the businesses] want".
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    It's not a real threat, because as UBI is slowly ratcheted up to actually be a livable wage automation will replace all of that unskilled labor. If we instituted a UBI right now it might be something really low, like maybe $200/mo. A person might work fewer hours at their shitty no-skill low wage job, but they aren't going to quit.
    - ianai 10y ago
      It would vary by locality. I'm guessing the figure should be such that you could afford rent (1 bedroom, worst part of town) and food off it.
      - Consultant32452 10y ago
        Eventually yes, but I was speaking of the transition period that the OP was asking about... what will happen while businesses still need labor? That is, before we've successfully automated all of the low skill human labor? Well, until then, we need people to work, so the UBI would have to be below a livable wage.
        ianai 10y ago
        Not at all. People will still want to work. Everyone wants better than they currently have. so you can afford food and rent. you may not need it but you still want a cell phone, Internet, a car, etc etc. the point is to ensure a basic quality of life. The rest is up to the individual. Plus after UBI people will be much more open to working fewer hours or with no benefits. It's a very strong positive externality on labor flexibility.
      - dllthomas 10y ago
        If you mean "in practice it will vary by location because it won't be everywhere provided by the same organization, and thus likely won't be provided everywhere under the same rules," then I agree with your expectation. If you mean "a basic income, offered by the same organization in multiple places, should be adjusted for cost of living", I disagree. Moving some "extra" funds towards lower cost-of-living areas winds up being a feature - resources are shifted (slightly) away from concentrations of wealth and toward concentrations of people, where those disagree.
  - deciplex 10y ago
    Only if you think businesses that rely on extremely low wages in order to be profitable deserve to exist. Frankly if the only way you can make widgets is to pay your widget-makers just enough so that they don't die, or perhaps less, then in my opinion society should reconsider how valuable it considers widgets to be, or at least whether someone else can make widgets more efficiently.
    - ianai 10y ago
      It's called a market externality. In economic terms, any externalities like this are a symptom of market failure. Get enough of them and a market won't exist or arguably should not. At the very least it represents inefficiencies. Everybody's supposed to agree to hate all of the aforementioned in a capitalistic economy.
    - winstonewert 10y ago
      @ianai, how is this an externality? Aren't externalities costs/benefits that accrue to third parties? But this doesn't seem to be in that category.
      - ianai 10y ago
        An externality impacts the market through a means other than the immediate price point of a good. As Milton Friedman put it, the market only affords one communication method between supplier and demander: price. That, alone is meant to encapsulate all input costs. If to employ someone to make or render a good or service the employer relies on an external factor such as the state of the world then the employer is exploiting a market externality.
        winstonewert 10y ago
        That's a much wider definition of externality then I was taught when I studied economics. To quote wikipedia: "In economics, an externality is the cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit" So, it's not just any state of the world, but in particular that my actions cause cost/benefits to other parties.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    To me that sounds like an upside, not a problem. With UBI, workers have more bargaining power, so employers can no longer get away with treating them like they're disposable.
- lisper 10y ago
  This. Oh so much this. The more I learn about how the world works, the more I am amazed and horrified by the creative and subtle ways that humans come up with to coerce other humans into doing their bidding without realizing that they are being coerced. (Donald Trump is a master of this game!)
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    The strong never stopped dominating the weak, it's just that what constitutes the strength required to wield power changes over time.
    - kristopolous 10y ago
      Abuse and subjugation isn't the only possibility for people to engage.
      - gkya 10y ago
        What are others?
        kristopolous 10y ago
        Collaboration, compassion, generosity, impartiality, consorting, cooperation, objectiveness, equality, fraternity, sympathy, understanding, acceptance... Boots stomping faces isn't the only thing there is.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    The irony in your post is delightful. Creative and subtle indeed.
  - brbsix 10y ago
    > the creative and subtle ways that humans come up with to coerce other humans into doing their bidding without realizing that they are being coerced I think you've just described government in general (and the propaganda that propagates among it's Stockholm syndrome-esque sufferers).
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Not at all. UBI is a cynical attempt to push people into even more if casual gig jobs that are en vogue right now. UBI lets you subsist so that you're free to drop off my groceries for beer money. All of the other unicorn bullshit (automation will free us from want, etc) is the 2016 equivalent of the 1956 flying car or magical gourmet microwave dinner.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    This is productivity versus wages over the last 45 years: https://i.imgur.com/nb1qbkZ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/nb1qbkZ.jpg Note how wages have not increased as productivity has? UBI is what fixes that. Its distributes that productivity to people so they are not slaves to capital.
    - deciplex 10y ago
      It might fix it, but I think not directly. UBI alone won't fix the productivity-wage gap because giving everyone a flat grant isn't going to stop employers from paying low wages. However, it will remove one bit of leverage employers have when negotiating low wages, that being threat of destitution, which hopefully would help get wages tracking with productivity again, as they should.
      - kowdermeister 10y ago
        > It might fix it, but I think not directly Cool, let's see it then ;)
      - coredog64 10y ago
        How is that any different than EITC?
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      There's more to that curve than automation. During that same period, you broadened the scope of the workforce greatly by bringing women into the mainstream workplace and ending systematic discrimination against minorities. ...and then the scope of the workforce was globalized. Talk to any private sector union steward about the biggest roadblock in negotiations -- it's the ability to leverage the liquidity of the labor market to pick up to move to Mexico, China, India, etc. In the public sector, unions don't have that problem -- you can't outsource the cops (yet).
- Shivetya 10y ago
  More importantly politicians rely on being able to selectively dole out support and money and a UBI would take away that ability and thereby a lot of the direct influence over segments of society. If anything I am quite sure businesses would be more than happy with UBI because they would not get people who HAD TO TAKE THAT JOB and instead people who took it because they wanted it. A UBI would never be high enough to allow you to skip work unless it also provide absolute basic housing too and food.
- DominikR 10y ago
  My hypothesis is much simpler and doesn't involve a conspiracy of evil corporations and evil government: The only way to grow an economy is to grow the private sector. That's not yet my hypothesis, it's just a plain fact as the government sector can only exist by the taxes paid by the private sector. My hypothesis: The government believes that too many will simply stop working (thus causing a contraction in the private sector and in the end also in the government sector - which is supposed to use its shrinking resources to pay for UBI)
  - pm90 10y ago
    Its not as simple as that. You're assuming that all Govt. programs lose money, which is definitely not true. Furthermore, from historical data, most of the economic miracles/expansions have been a result of large scale fiscal policies by the federal govt. of respective countries. New Deal, Marshall Plan, War Spending for WW2 etc. all provided the boost that was required to kickstart the economic engines of the respective countries and military spending continues to sustain the US economy to this day. I love this community but really dislike the simplistic acceptance of Randian theories of economic growth and the importance of the private sector. Private sectors are most definitely important and required. But only the Government has the capacity, the resources and the will to execute something like the Manhattan Project, the Moon Mission etc. We shouldn't dismiss any sector so easily.
- foxylad 10y ago
  Very true - and as well as freeing you from bad jobs, UBI frees you from bad marriages. According to a recent Freakonomics podcast, a trial of UBI in a Canadian town lead to a rise in divorces. It was therefore shut down with extreme prejudice by socially conservative politicians. On the bad job front, I think a UBI could resolve an imbalance that has always perturbed me. When I was travelling, I once got a job in a laundry - I hadn't realised that laundries have dirty and clean ends, and guess where new employees start! It was disgusting, and the only positive was the space everyone gave me on the crowded bus home. Then a contract job came through compiling a report that an overseas company had promised to carry out if they got some contract. I went from a horrible job on minimum wage to a plush office job at ten times the rate, and at the time it seemed crazy that I was paid more, not less. A UBI would seriously shake this up. Society would have to pay more to incentivise people to do the the less-glamorous jobs, which to my mind would be fairer.
  - mdorazio 10y ago
    Very true. Note, however, that this would also increase the cost of the outputs of those jobs to consumers. In your case the cost of laundry would probably increase to the point where it wouldn't make sense for a lot of people anymore. It's a complicated web of job loss, job creation, wage increases, price increases, automation, and several other factors all bound up together.
    - pm90 10y ago
      I agree its complex but I would rather free people up and suffer the consequences of larger costs than have a majority of the populace engage in rather meaningless activities. It should at least be given a shot, especially when we have the means - automation - to do it somewhat cheaply.
deciplex 10y ago
The idea that people will stop working without the constant threat of total destitution lingering on the periphery, is so totally ingrained into the American psyche that it isn't even worth mentioning.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "is so totally ingrained into the American psyche that it isn't even worth mentioning." It's hard to appreciate something you're surrounded by (to use an analogy, it's hard to appreciate the air if you're constantly surrounded by it, would be the same for a fish with regards to water). With that in mind, it can be useful to point out the ingrained parts of a culture. If nothing else it allows us to re-examine deeply held beliefs to see if they stand up to scrutiny.
  - deciplex 10y ago
    I meant it isn't "worth it" for Jason Furman to mention it, because he can assume that virtually everyone listening (or, at least, his intended audience) not only assumes it as a given, but has it so ingrained into how they think about the world that mentioning it in the first place would actually be weird. To borrow your example, if a fish started every argument with "we are surrounded by water, therefore..." I don't disagree with you.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
> "We should not advance a policy that is premised on giving up on the possibility of workers’ remaining employed" Yeah, this makes about as much sense as, say, "We should not advance a policy that is premised on giving up on the possibility of stamping out marijuana use."
- Retra 10y ago
  It's really putting the cart before the horse. Nobody is going to their grave saying "Gee, I'm glad I was employed my whole life. Doesn't matter if I was miserable, because I had a job!"

ubernostrum 10y ago

Part of the issue is UBI poses a threat to established ways of doing things -- many businesses rely on the relative lack of social and labor mobility as a way to provide the continual supply of low-paid unskilled workers they want. The threat in UBI is that those workers would be able to take time out of the labor market and get education and training or even start their own businesses instead of settling for the "it's the only game in town" of working under the established model.

cle 10y ago
I've been skeptically positive towards UBI, but this sounds like a real problem with UBI, to me. Do you think there is merit to this concern?
- ianai 10y ago
  If your strategy for employing labor includes anything other than the monetary recouperation for someone's time then your entire labor strategy is perverse.
- iand 10y ago
  Can you clarify the question? It sounds like you think UBI's problem is that it removes the "continual supply of low-paid unskilled workers [the businesses] want".
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  It's not a real threat, because as UBI is slowly ratcheted up to actually be a livable wage automation will replace all of that unskilled labor. If we instituted a UBI right now it might be something really low, like maybe $200/mo. A person might work fewer hours at their shitty no-skill low wage job, but they aren't going to quit.
  - ianai 10y ago
    It would vary by locality. I'm guessing the figure should be such that you could afford rent (1 bedroom, worst part of town) and food off it.
    - Consultant32452 10y ago
      Eventually yes, but I was speaking of the transition period that the OP was asking about... what will happen while businesses still need labor? That is, before we've successfully automated all of the low skill human labor? Well, until then, we need people to work, so the UBI would have to be below a livable wage.
      - ianai 10y ago
        Not at all. People will still want to work. Everyone wants better than they currently have. so you can afford food and rent. you may not need it but you still want a cell phone, Internet, a car, etc etc. the point is to ensure a basic quality of life. The rest is up to the individual. Plus after UBI people will be much more open to working fewer hours or with no benefits. It's a very strong positive externality on labor flexibility.
    - dllthomas 10y ago
      If you mean "in practice it will vary by location because it won't be everywhere provided by the same organization, and thus likely won't be provided everywhere under the same rules," then I agree with your expectation. If you mean "a basic income, offered by the same organization in multiple places, should be adjusted for cost of living", I disagree. Moving some "extra" funds towards lower cost-of-living areas winds up being a feature - resources are shifted (slightly) away from concentrations of wealth and toward concentrations of people, where those disagree.
- deciplex 10y ago
  Only if you think businesses that rely on extremely low wages in order to be profitable deserve to exist. Frankly if the only way you can make widgets is to pay your widget-makers just enough so that they don't die, or perhaps less, then in my opinion society should reconsider how valuable it considers widgets to be, or at least whether someone else can make widgets more efficiently.
  - ianai 10y ago
    It's called a market externality. In economic terms, any externalities like this are a symptom of market failure. Get enough of them and a market won't exist or arguably should not. At the very least it represents inefficiencies. Everybody's supposed to agree to hate all of the aforementioned in a capitalistic economy.
  - winstonewert 10y ago
    @ianai, how is this an externality? Aren't externalities costs/benefits that accrue to third parties? But this doesn't seem to be in that category.
    - ianai 10y ago
      An externality impacts the market through a means other than the immediate price point of a good. As Milton Friedman put it, the market only affords one communication method between supplier and demander: price. That, alone is meant to encapsulate all input costs. If to employ someone to make or render a good or service the employer relies on an external factor such as the state of the world then the employer is exploiting a market externality.
      - winstonewert 10y ago
        That's a much wider definition of externality then I was taught when I studied economics. To quote wikipedia: "In economics, an externality is the cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit" So, it's not just any state of the world, but in particular that my actions cause cost/benefits to other parties.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  To me that sounds like an upside, not a problem. With UBI, workers have more bargaining power, so employers can no longer get away with treating them like they're disposable.
lisper 10y ago
This. Oh so much this. The more I learn about how the world works, the more I am amazed and horrified by the creative and subtle ways that humans come up with to coerce other humans into doing their bidding without realizing that they are being coerced. (Donald Trump is a master of this game!)
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  The strong never stopped dominating the weak, it's just that what constitutes the strength required to wield power changes over time.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    Abuse and subjugation isn't the only possibility for people to engage.
    - gkya 10y ago
      What are others?
      - kristopolous 10y ago
        Collaboration, compassion, generosity, impartiality, consorting, cooperation, objectiveness, equality, fraternity, sympathy, understanding, acceptance... Boots stomping faces isn't the only thing there is.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  The irony in your post is delightful. Creative and subtle indeed.
- brbsix 10y ago
  > the creative and subtle ways that humans come up with to coerce other humans into doing their bidding without realizing that they are being coerced I think you've just described government in general (and the propaganda that propagates among it's Stockholm syndrome-esque sufferers).
Spooky23 10y ago
Not at all. UBI is a cynical attempt to push people into even more if casual gig jobs that are en vogue right now. UBI lets you subsist so that you're free to drop off my groceries for beer money. All of the other unicorn bullshit (automation will free us from want, etc) is the 2016 equivalent of the 1956 flying car or magical gourmet microwave dinner.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  This is productivity versus wages over the last 45 years: https://i.imgur.com/nb1qbkZ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/nb1qbkZ.jpg Note how wages have not increased as productivity has? UBI is what fixes that. Its distributes that productivity to people so they are not slaves to capital.
  - deciplex 10y ago
    It might fix it, but I think not directly. UBI alone won't fix the productivity-wage gap because giving everyone a flat grant isn't going to stop employers from paying low wages. However, it will remove one bit of leverage employers have when negotiating low wages, that being threat of destitution, which hopefully would help get wages tracking with productivity again, as they should.
    - kowdermeister 10y ago
      > It might fix it, but I think not directly Cool, let's see it then ;)
    - coredog64 10y ago
      How is that any different than EITC?
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    There's more to that curve than automation. During that same period, you broadened the scope of the workforce greatly by bringing women into the mainstream workplace and ending systematic discrimination against minorities. ...and then the scope of the workforce was globalized. Talk to any private sector union steward about the biggest roadblock in negotiations -- it's the ability to leverage the liquidity of the labor market to pick up to move to Mexico, China, India, etc. In the public sector, unions don't have that problem -- you can't outsource the cops (yet).
Shivetya 10y ago
More importantly politicians rely on being able to selectively dole out support and money and a UBI would take away that ability and thereby a lot of the direct influence over segments of society. If anything I am quite sure businesses would be more than happy with UBI because they would not get people who HAD TO TAKE THAT JOB and instead people who took it because they wanted it. A UBI would never be high enough to allow you to skip work unless it also provide absolute basic housing too and food.
DominikR 10y ago
My hypothesis is much simpler and doesn't involve a conspiracy of evil corporations and evil government: The only way to grow an economy is to grow the private sector. That's not yet my hypothesis, it's just a plain fact as the government sector can only exist by the taxes paid by the private sector. My hypothesis: The government believes that too many will simply stop working (thus causing a contraction in the private sector and in the end also in the government sector - which is supposed to use its shrinking resources to pay for UBI)
- pm90 10y ago
  Its not as simple as that. You're assuming that all Govt. programs lose money, which is definitely not true. Furthermore, from historical data, most of the economic miracles/expansions have been a result of large scale fiscal policies by the federal govt. of respective countries. New Deal, Marshall Plan, War Spending for WW2 etc. all provided the boost that was required to kickstart the economic engines of the respective countries and military spending continues to sustain the US economy to this day. I love this community but really dislike the simplistic acceptance of Randian theories of economic growth and the importance of the private sector. Private sectors are most definitely important and required. But only the Government has the capacity, the resources and the will to execute something like the Manhattan Project, the Moon Mission etc. We shouldn't dismiss any sector so easily.
foxylad 10y ago
Very true - and as well as freeing you from bad jobs, UBI frees you from bad marriages. According to a recent Freakonomics podcast, a trial of UBI in a Canadian town lead to a rise in divorces. It was therefore shut down with extreme prejudice by socially conservative politicians. On the bad job front, I think a UBI could resolve an imbalance that has always perturbed me. When I was travelling, I once got a job in a laundry - I hadn't realised that laundries have dirty and clean ends, and guess where new employees start! It was disgusting, and the only positive was the space everyone gave me on the crowded bus home. Then a contract job came through compiling a report that an overseas company had promised to carry out if they got some contract. I went from a horrible job on minimum wage to a plush office job at ten times the rate, and at the time it seemed crazy that I was paid more, not less. A UBI would seriously shake this up. Society would have to pay more to incentivise people to do the the less-glamorous jobs, which to my mind would be fairer.
- mdorazio 10y ago
  Very true. Note, however, that this would also increase the cost of the outputs of those jobs to consumers. In your case the cost of laundry would probably increase to the point where it wouldn't make sense for a lot of people anymore. It's a complicated web of job loss, job creation, wage increases, price increases, automation, and several other factors all bound up together.
  - pm90 10y ago
    I agree its complex but I would rather free people up and suffer the consequences of larger costs than have a majority of the populace engage in rather meaningless activities. It should at least be given a shot, especially when we have the means - automation - to do it somewhat cheaply.

deciplex 10y ago

The idea that people will stop working without the constant threat of total destitution lingering on the periphery, is so totally ingrained into the American psyche that it isn't even worth mentioning.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "is so totally ingrained into the American psyche that it isn't even worth mentioning." It's hard to appreciate something you're surrounded by (to use an analogy, it's hard to appreciate the air if you're constantly surrounded by it, would be the same for a fish with regards to water). With that in mind, it can be useful to point out the ingrained parts of a culture. If nothing else it allows us to re-examine deeply held beliefs to see if they stand up to scrutiny.
- deciplex 10y ago
  I meant it isn't "worth it" for Jason Furman to mention it, because he can assume that virtually everyone listening (or, at least, his intended audience) not only assumes it as a given, but has it so ingrained into how they think about the world that mentioning it in the first place would actually be weird. To borrow your example, if a fish started every argument with "we are surrounded by water, therefore..." I don't disagree with you.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

> "We should not advance a policy that is premised on giving up on the possibility of workers’ remaining employed" Yeah, this makes about as much sense as, say, "We should not advance a policy that is premised on giving up on the possibility of stamping out marijuana use."

Retra 10y ago
It's really putting the cart before the horse. Nobody is going to their grave saying "Gee, I'm glad I was employed my whole life. Doesn't matter if I was miserable, because I had a job!"