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This guy just seems upset that people are offering up a solution to tech-related job loss that isn't with traditional welfare solution proposed by the team he c

by jnbiche 10y ago

This guy just seems upset that people are offering up a solution to tech-related job loss that isn't with traditional welfare solution proposed by the team he cheers for. He didn't spent a lot of time offering up specific arguments against basic income, but rather on background, and the primary arguments he has are to me some of the strongest arguments for BI: 1) He worries about division and polarization. Well, BI is the only solution that I'm aware of that draws on support from both the libertarian right (strong support, mostly) and liberal left (many support, but some are suspicious like this guy). No other solution to the jobless future can boast of support from both sides of the political spectrum. 2) Oddly, the quote from Olaf Palme he offers up as a critique of basic income reads to me as strong support: "An efficient and stable welfare state must be based on universal social programs, such as health insurance, pensions, and child-support allowances-programs that are directed to all citizens. Official “poverty lines” or “means-tests” would not have to define “the poor” (which would minimize the need for bureaucratic controls). At the same time, people in difficult financial circumstances would not have to put up with the degrading classification of “poor.”" This sounds like an extremely persuasive argument for BI and one of the reasons why I support it. In fact, it's completely unclear to me after reading this whole damn essay why he is so strongly in opposition to the point where he wants people to stop discussing it altogether, other than it's not the favored solution of his team.

stephengillie 10y ago
> On the right is the infamous voucher system. It has been widely experimented, often with negative results, in fields such as education. The principle is to provide individuals with money and let them find providers on a lightly regulated market. Vouchers often deliver poor performance. The money distributed contributes to inflating the prices as the price elasticity of supply is negative—if only because nobody’s sure that the vouchers will last (everything depends on the next round of elections). Those with lesser means, having only the voucher to spend, are thus trapped with the worst providers (or no provider at all, despite the voucher), while the richest pay on top of the vouchers to secure access to the best offer, contributing even more to inflating prices. On the left, we find the giant social bureaucracy we are all fed up with. The quintessential bureaucratic social state is the British National Health Service (NHS). The advantage of a system such as the treasured NHS is that it guarantees everyone access to affordable and professional care providers whatever your location and your income level. The painful problem, which turned the NHS into a thorn in the side of every British government, is that in the current context of tax revolt, hatred of government, and fiscal austerity, the quality of the experience provided by the NHS can only go down, with longer waiting lines, less customized care, and ultimately a vicious circle in which everybody loses, patients as well as professionals. On one side, it's economically unsound, and will require massive taxation to be sustainable. Otherwise, it will only work until all the Angels run out of money, then it will cause massive inflation. Mathematically, there are no other options. Second, who's going to administer it? Governments, being made from people, are notorious for corruption and scandal, and poor service.
- inflagranti 10y ago
  Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!? I guess you mean private companies which are always well run (how many banks had to be bailed out?), never susceptible to corruption (VW comes to mind just recently) and offer great customer service (any cable company ever)...
  - geezerjay 10y ago
    > Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!? You've missed the point. The point is that the foundation of the basic income concept is that the income redistribution scheme works flawlessly and according to the people's expectations. This assumption is patently false, as the system is established and managed by people, particularly elected officials and the regime's apparatchiks, who have a long and plentiful resume of manipulating, distorting and corrupting the state to fit their own personal agendas. I can tell you exactly what happened in my country's income redistribution scheme. It is supposed to be entirely independent of the state and self-managed. Yet' somehow the ruling regime managed to manipulate the system to finance golden parachutes to the nation's career politicians (golden pensions paid off to people who never contributed to the scheme) as well as forcing it as a cash cow to the state as a exceedingly cheap source of state loans. And it is supposed to be a simple system where worker contributes 1/3 of their salary to finance pensions and unemployment benefits. That's what these organizations made by people are used for, in reality, and reality always trumps fiction.
    - inflagranti 10y ago
      Maybe that was his point, it was absolutely not what he wrote though. I won't contest that any redistribution scheme will not work flawlessly, but nor will anything else! So if the argument is, it won't work because it's run by people, that's just silly, as any alternative will have the same 'limitation'. Now again, the fact that there is corruption in many countries and money is used wrongly simply means there might be initial or additional work be done, but it definitely does not mean it's inherently not possible, there are plenty of government with low corruption, too. Finally, what's the alternative? Let the market work and private companies, which I highlighted have the exact same flaws as the government, possibly just on a smaller scale!? Just putting our heads in the sand and saying this will never work is not a way forward, unless you think of course there's no problem in the first place.
throwaway2016a 10y ago
I found your comment constructive and I don't want to start an off-topic debate, just open something up to private contemplation. You, of course, have a right to your own opinion. Many (all?) libertarians lean left on a great many social issue and consider the social part of libertarianism as important if not more important than the right leaning economic part. I think the term "libertarian right" while not an incorrect term at face value -- there are in fact right leaning Libertarians just as some Democrats are further left than others -- is miss-leading and can potential lead to misconceptions about Libertarians as similar to Republicans. I for one share much more in common with the Democrats but I am very definitely a Libertarian. I think many of us would prefer you just use the term Libertarian and leave off left or right. Edit: or perhaps if you were in-deed referring to the conservative party, add some clarity and say "Republicans that lean Libertarian"
- jnbiche 10y ago
  This is fair comment. I'm also a libertarian and wouldn't really consider myself to be "right". I suppose most Americans would consider me to be left on social issues and somewhat right on economic issues. On the other hand, in my experience, libertarians are pretty far from being liberals, and even farther from being typical Democrats. Personally, I share even less with typical Democrats than with typical (non-Trump and non-Evangelical) Republicans. I do share a lot of social beliefs with people who consider themselves to be liberals first and foremost, and agree with them about some of this nation's greatest challenges. I've found typical Democrats to be against drug legalization and only with great hesitation have started supporting LGBT rights, when most libertarians were supporting gay rights 40 years ago (in the sense that gays rights mean that gays have the same rights as everyone else, because what people do in the privacy of their homes is not the government's business). Anyway, I think it's fair to say that there's support for BI from two different parts, if not sides, of the political spectrum. But fair point about there being left libertarians and right libertarians, I don't really disagree. I mean, Chomsky calls himself a libertarian, but is definitely "of the left" (and I happen to disagree with him on a lot of issues, yet share some of his core beliefs about the dangers of government and authoritarianism). I'll take more care in the future.
Nicolas_Colin 10y ago
Thank you for your response. I wrote this article because it seems to me the basic income discussion is orchestrated by people, notably in technology, who are unaware of politics and reluctant to get their hands dirty. I know that UBI, on paper, looks like it’s a good answer to many of the challenges listed at the end. But I don’t think that UBI, once put in place, would be as strong, politically, as other universal programs such as universal social insurance: => Round #1: new left-wing government enacts UBI with appropriate funding. => Round #2: left-wing government loses elections, new right-wing government decides to target UBI on the poor in order to master the costs. UBI becomes BI without the "U". => Round #3: the rich find that their taxes are too high and denounce the BI-claiming poor as welfare queens, contributing to the right-wing government winning reelection and weakening BI even more. There are two kinds of universal benefits: the rich (and the middle class) all need universal health insurance (in case they have cancer), but they don’t really need UBI because they earn enough money from other sources. So I’m not sure why, even if they’re supportive at the beginning, they would keep on supporting UBI under the inevitable ideological and financial pressure that comes with a polarized democratic society. Considering this perspective, my understanding is that all the energy thrown in BI-related discussions is wasted while it could be invested in favor of universal health insurance for instance (which the US still lacks even with Obamacare, and which could benefit for the attention and design skills from the tech community).
- coredog64 10y ago
  To come at it from the other side, UBI is sold as a replacement for a number of other social programs. I find it very hard to believe that, in the US at least, any of those other social programs would be dismantled and stay dead. It is more likely that UBI would temporarily replace one or two programs in the social safety net before being supplemented with two or three more new ones. As both US parties currently have significant trust issues with one another, I would say UBI is a complete non-starter.
- roymurdock 10y ago
  Thanks for writing the article. It was well thought out and pretty comprehensive. I couldn't seem to find a clear definition of UBI in the article, which helps people discuss the concept as many people view possible UBI programs completely differently. While I am in agreement that UBI is massively overhyped and not a true, large-scale solution to income inequality, I'm happy that it has gotten so much interest and might lead to productive conversations around tax reform.
randomdata 10y ago
Is there really tech-related job loss? Or does tech actually create more jobs? I am from Canada, so that is the data I am most familiar with. The employment rate has almost never been higher (2008 was the highest), the unemployment rate has almost never been lower (2008 was the lowest). The US housing crash did take some toll on the Canadian economy as did the more recent fall in oil prices, but we're still looking far better than the historic norms when it comes to job numbers. At the same time, I remember in the mid-1980s there was widespread media panic about how the robots starting to become common in manufacturing were going to eliminate all the jobs. A rise in employment, and decline in unemployment is exactly the opposite of what I would have expected in the following 30 years based on the panic at the time. The claims being made today are exactly the same as they were 30 years ago.
- DanFeldman 10y ago
  There will be a huge loss of jobs in the next 10 years, not job creation. At some point, self driving cars will exist with no driver, and around the same time, self driving trucks. Truck driver is still the most common job in many states [0]. When was the last time we saw the most common job on the brink of being wiped out? Even if tech continues to grow and add jobs, will it surpass the loss from the trucking and transportation industry? [0]: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t... Edit: [1] questions the claim that trucking in the most common job by state. There's still a lot of drivers out there though! [1]: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-most-common-job-in-your-state-2015-02-12 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-mo...
  - randomdata 10y ago
    > When was the last time we saw the most common job on the brink of being wiped out? A couple of hundred years ago. And not just the most common job, but the job that was employing 90% of the labour force at the time. For comparison, transport truck driver accounts for just 1.5% of the labour force in Canada. > Even if tech continues to grow and add jobs, will it surpass the loss from the trucking and transportation industry? Yes. I struggle to believe we've reached the pinnacle of human achievement. Do you think the last time we went through this that people were sitting around thinking that the internet will provide jobs in the future? I'll be amazed if they even grasped that an internet could be possible. The jobs that will need to be done are things we cannot even dream of right now. If we could dream of them, we'd already be doing it.

by jnbiche 10y ago

stephengillie 10y ago

> On the right is the infamous voucher system. It has been widely experimented, often with negative results, in fields such as education. The principle is to provide individuals with money and let them find providers on a lightly regulated market. Vouchers often deliver poor performance. The money distributed contributes to inflating the prices as the price elasticity of supply is negative—if only because nobody’s sure that the vouchers will last (everything depends on the next round of elections). Those with lesser means, having only the voucher to spend, are thus trapped with the worst providers (or no provider at all, despite the voucher), while the richest pay on top of the vouchers to secure access to the best offer, contributing even more to inflating prices. On the left, we find the giant social bureaucracy we are all fed up with. The quintessential bureaucratic social state is the British National Health Service (NHS). The advantage of a system such as the treasured NHS is that it guarantees everyone access to affordable and professional care providers whatever your location and your income level. The painful problem, which turned the NHS into a thorn in the side of every British government, is that in the current context of tax revolt, hatred of government, and fiscal austerity, the quality of the experience provided by the NHS can only go down, with longer waiting lines, less customized care, and ultimately a vicious circle in which everybody loses, patients as well as professionals. On one side, it's economically unsound, and will require massive taxation to be sustainable. Otherwise, it will only work until all the Angels run out of money, then it will cause massive inflation. Mathematically, there are no other options. Second, who's going to administer it? Governments, being made from people, are notorious for corruption and scandal, and poor service.

inflagranti 10y ago
Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!? I guess you mean private companies which are always well run (how many banks had to be bailed out?), never susceptible to corruption (VW comes to mind just recently) and offer great customer service (any cable company ever)...
- geezerjay 10y ago
  > Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!? You've missed the point. The point is that the foundation of the basic income concept is that the income redistribution scheme works flawlessly and according to the people's expectations. This assumption is patently false, as the system is established and managed by people, particularly elected officials and the regime's apparatchiks, who have a long and plentiful resume of manipulating, distorting and corrupting the state to fit their own personal agendas. I can tell you exactly what happened in my country's income redistribution scheme. It is supposed to be entirely independent of the state and self-managed. Yet' somehow the ruling regime managed to manipulate the system to finance golden parachutes to the nation's career politicians (golden pensions paid off to people who never contributed to the scheme) as well as forcing it as a cash cow to the state as a exceedingly cheap source of state loans. And it is supposed to be a simple system where worker contributes 1/3 of their salary to finance pensions and unemployment benefits. That's what these organizations made by people are used for, in reality, and reality always trumps fiction.
  - inflagranti 10y ago
    Maybe that was his point, it was absolutely not what he wrote though. I won't contest that any redistribution scheme will not work flawlessly, but nor will anything else! So if the argument is, it won't work because it's run by people, that's just silly, as any alternative will have the same 'limitation'. Now again, the fact that there is corruption in many countries and money is used wrongly simply means there might be initial or additional work be done, but it definitely does not mean it's inherently not possible, there are plenty of government with low corruption, too. Finally, what's the alternative? Let the market work and private companies, which I highlighted have the exact same flaws as the government, possibly just on a smaller scale!? Just putting our heads in the sand and saying this will never work is not a way forward, unless you think of course there's no problem in the first place.

throwaway2016a 10y ago

I found your comment constructive and I don't want to start an off-topic debate, just open something up to private contemplation. You, of course, have a right to your own opinion. Many (all?) libertarians lean left on a great many social issue and consider the social part of libertarianism as important if not more important than the right leaning economic part. I think the term "libertarian right" while not an incorrect term at face value -- there are in fact right leaning Libertarians just as some Democrats are further left than others -- is miss-leading and can potential lead to misconceptions about Libertarians as similar to Republicans. I for one share much more in common with the Democrats but I am very definitely a Libertarian. I think many of us would prefer you just use the term Libertarian and leave off left or right. Edit: or perhaps if you were in-deed referring to the conservative party, add some clarity and say "Republicans that lean Libertarian"

jnbiche 10y ago
This is fair comment. I'm also a libertarian and wouldn't really consider myself to be "right". I suppose most Americans would consider me to be left on social issues and somewhat right on economic issues. On the other hand, in my experience, libertarians are pretty far from being liberals, and even farther from being typical Democrats. Personally, I share even less with typical Democrats than with typical (non-Trump and non-Evangelical) Republicans. I do share a lot of social beliefs with people who consider themselves to be liberals first and foremost, and agree with them about some of this nation's greatest challenges. I've found typical Democrats to be against drug legalization and only with great hesitation have started supporting LGBT rights, when most libertarians were supporting gay rights 40 years ago (in the sense that gays rights mean that gays have the same rights as everyone else, because what people do in the privacy of their homes is not the government's business). Anyway, I think it's fair to say that there's support for BI from two different parts, if not sides, of the political spectrum. But fair point about there being left libertarians and right libertarians, I don't really disagree. I mean, Chomsky calls himself a libertarian, but is definitely "of the left" (and I happen to disagree with him on a lot of issues, yet share some of his core beliefs about the dangers of government and authoritarianism). I'll take more care in the future.

Nicolas_Colin 10y ago

Thank you for your response. I wrote this article because it seems to me the basic income discussion is orchestrated by people, notably in technology, who are unaware of politics and reluctant to get their hands dirty. I know that UBI, on paper, looks like it’s a good answer to many of the challenges listed at the end. But I don’t think that UBI, once put in place, would be as strong, politically, as other universal programs such as universal social insurance: => Round #1: new left-wing government enacts UBI with appropriate funding. => Round #2: left-wing government loses elections, new right-wing government decides to target UBI on the poor in order to master the costs. UBI becomes BI without the "U". => Round #3: the rich find that their taxes are too high and denounce the BI-claiming poor as welfare queens, contributing to the right-wing government winning reelection and weakening BI even more. There are two kinds of universal benefits: the rich (and the middle class) all need universal health insurance (in case they have cancer), but they don’t really need UBI because they earn enough money from other sources. So I’m not sure why, even if they’re supportive at the beginning, they would keep on supporting UBI under the inevitable ideological and financial pressure that comes with a polarized democratic society. Considering this perspective, my understanding is that all the energy thrown in BI-related discussions is wasted while it could be invested in favor of universal health insurance for instance (which the US still lacks even with Obamacare, and which could benefit for the attention and design skills from the tech community).

coredog64 10y ago
To come at it from the other side, UBI is sold as a replacement for a number of other social programs. I find it very hard to believe that, in the US at least, any of those other social programs would be dismantled and stay dead. It is more likely that UBI would temporarily replace one or two programs in the social safety net before being supplemented with two or three more new ones. As both US parties currently have significant trust issues with one another, I would say UBI is a complete non-starter.
roymurdock 10y ago
Thanks for writing the article. It was well thought out and pretty comprehensive. I couldn't seem to find a clear definition of UBI in the article, which helps people discuss the concept as many people view possible UBI programs completely differently. While I am in agreement that UBI is massively overhyped and not a true, large-scale solution to income inequality, I'm happy that it has gotten so much interest and might lead to productive conversations around tax reform.

randomdata 10y ago

Is there really tech-related job loss? Or does tech actually create more jobs? I am from Canada, so that is the data I am most familiar with. The employment rate has almost never been higher (2008 was the highest), the unemployment rate has almost never been lower (2008 was the lowest). The US housing crash did take some toll on the Canadian economy as did the more recent fall in oil prices, but we're still looking far better than the historic norms when it comes to job numbers. At the same time, I remember in the mid-1980s there was widespread media panic about how the robots starting to become common in manufacturing were going to eliminate all the jobs. A rise in employment, and decline in unemployment is exactly the opposite of what I would have expected in the following 30 years based on the panic at the time. The claims being made today are exactly the same as they were 30 years ago.

DanFeldman 10y ago
There will be a huge loss of jobs in the next 10 years, not job creation. At some point, self driving cars will exist with no driver, and around the same time, self driving trucks. Truck driver is still the most common job in many states [0]. When was the last time we saw the most common job on the brink of being wiped out? Even if tech continues to grow and add jobs, will it surpass the loss from the trucking and transportation industry? [0]: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t... Edit: [1] questions the claim that trucking in the most common job by state. There's still a lot of drivers out there though! [1]: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-most-common-job-in-your-state-2015-02-12 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-mo...
- randomdata 10y ago
  > When was the last time we saw the most common job on the brink of being wiped out? A couple of hundred years ago. And not just the most common job, but the job that was employing 90% of the labour force at the time. For comparison, transport truck driver accounts for just 1.5% of the labour force in Canada. > Even if tech continues to grow and add jobs, will it surpass the loss from the trucking and transportation industry? Yes. I struggle to believe we've reached the pinnacle of human achievement. Do you think the last time we went through this that people were sitting around thinking that the internet will provide jobs in the future? I'll be amazed if they even grasped that an internet could be possible. The jobs that will need to be done are things we cannot even dream of right now. If we could dream of them, we'd already be doing it.