3 ms·

How does one save if they don't make money in the first place? There are plenty of affordable places that you can buy a house at near minimum wage, but when tha

by taurath 10y ago

How does one save if they don't make money in the first place? There are plenty of affordable places that you can buy a house at near minimum wage, but when that minimum wage job goes away there's nothing left. In my experience, people don't have very much bargaining power even if they are financially stable, own a home and have savings when a force such as globalized trade comes through town - there is no bargaining power big enough to avoid shutting down a plant or a business, or moving it across state or country lines. People need income before being able to save, before being able to purchase assets regardless of their price. Whats more likely is that a factory that previously paid 400 people $10 an hour would rather pay 20 people $30 an hour, and that 380 people have no negotiating power.

mindslight 10y ago
> There are plenty of affordable places that you can buy a house at near minimum wage, but when that minimum wage job goes away there's nothing left. So this aspect is orthogonal to what I addressed in my original comment, hence my example of "$1k/mo to everyone in SF" - ruling out someone still getting $1k/mo after leaving SF. Economic feedback most immediately applies to in-demand housing markets where one can't simply cheaply acquire their own land and put up their own structure. But these type of concentrated areas are where the bulk of our economic activity is now occurring. The flip side of this is that if BI were at a national level, there would be a demand to move to rural areas where land was cheap, to reduce the largest rent. But since, as you point out, the economic opportunities are quite limited there such areas would be entirely reliant on BI. This would further cement the divide between urban "rat racers" and rural poverty, making it harder for those involuntarily caught in the latter to leave. > Whats more likely is that a factory that previously paid 400 people $10 an hour would rather pay 20 people $30 an hour, and that 380 people have no negotiating power BI won't restore those 380 people's negotiating power. Since their labor isn't demanded, they will effectively become wards of the state. With the economics I'm talking about, the 20 (40hr) people that are still employed gain bargaining power as they build liquid wealth. Rather than spending their entire life working, they demand fewer hours per week which actually restores demand for the other 380. This seems less convincing in the context of your extreme example (before all 400 could work 2 hours/week, other factors will start to matter), but the point is that this is the trend that should have already been happening for the prior decade instead of overleveraging encouraging sink-or-swim overworking. I'm actually not categorically ruling out the idea of BI. It's just that current calls for it completely ignore any feedback due to our official economic policy, and are actually just a continuation of the broken policy that has largely put us in this situation to begin with.
- taurath 10y ago
  > The flip side of this is that if BI were at a national level, there would be a demand to move to rural areas where land was cheap, to reduce the largest rent. But since, as you point out, the economic opportunities are quite limited there such areas would be entirely reliant on BI. This would further cement the divide between urban "rat racers" and rural poverty, making it harder for those involuntarily caught in the latter to leave. I'm not so sure myself - if you have nothing but time to pursue whatever it is that you want to do, would people not spend a lot of that time working on hobbies and interests? The amount of time that potentially highly productive people spend performing and just mentally/physically recovering from menial/dead-end work could be put to much better use. There's no reason with the internet today that that person couldn't become a rocket scientist despite living in a cheap area. Escaping the trap of these cheap rural areas is only difficult for economic reasons - its harder to save money when almost every bit of the low paying job goes to rent - you are spending your time spinning your wheels instead of experimenting, educating yourself or others. > This seems less convincing in the context of your extreme example (before all 400 could work 2 hours/week, other factors will start to matter), but the point is that this is the trend that should have already been happening for the prior decade instead of overleveraging encouraging sink-or-swim overworking. > I'm actually not categorically ruling out the idea of BI. It's just that current calls for it completely ignore any feedback due to our official economic policy, and are actually just a continuation of the broken policy that has largely put us in this situation to begin with. Asset inflation would surely happen in some areas, but we'd at least establish a basic floor. Everything could become higher priced, but it would allow for more fluidity and risk taking, and much more focus on education and learning. I feel like it'd be worthwhile to continue to experiment.

by taurath 10y ago

mindslight 10y ago

> There are plenty of affordable places that you can buy a house at near minimum wage, but when that minimum wage job goes away there's nothing left. So this aspect is orthogonal to what I addressed in my original comment, hence my example of "$1k/mo to everyone in SF" - ruling out someone still getting $1k/mo after leaving SF. Economic feedback most immediately applies to in-demand housing markets where one can't simply cheaply acquire their own land and put up their own structure. But these type of concentrated areas are where the bulk of our economic activity is now occurring. The flip side of this is that if BI were at a national level, there would be a demand to move to rural areas where land was cheap, to reduce the largest rent. But since, as you point out, the economic opportunities are quite limited there such areas would be entirely reliant on BI. This would further cement the divide between urban "rat racers" and rural poverty, making it harder for those involuntarily caught in the latter to leave. > Whats more likely is that a factory that previously paid 400 people $10 an hour would rather pay 20 people $30 an hour, and that 380 people have no negotiating power BI won't restore those 380 people's negotiating power. Since their labor isn't demanded, they will effectively become wards of the state. With the economics I'm talking about, the 20 (40hr) people that are still employed gain bargaining power as they build liquid wealth. Rather than spending their entire life working, they demand fewer hours per week which actually restores demand for the other 380. This seems less convincing in the context of your extreme example (before all 400 could work 2 hours/week, other factors will start to matter), but the point is that this is the trend that should have already been happening for the prior decade instead of overleveraging encouraging sink-or-swim overworking. I'm actually not categorically ruling out the idea of BI. It's just that current calls for it completely ignore any feedback due to our official economic policy, and are actually just a continuation of the broken policy that has largely put us in this situation to begin with.

taurath 10y ago
> The flip side of this is that if BI were at a national level, there would be a demand to move to rural areas where land was cheap, to reduce the largest rent. But since, as you point out, the economic opportunities are quite limited there such areas would be entirely reliant on BI. This would further cement the divide between urban "rat racers" and rural poverty, making it harder for those involuntarily caught in the latter to leave. I'm not so sure myself - if you have nothing but time to pursue whatever it is that you want to do, would people not spend a lot of that time working on hobbies and interests? The amount of time that potentially highly productive people spend performing and just mentally/physically recovering from menial/dead-end work could be put to much better use. There's no reason with the internet today that that person couldn't become a rocket scientist despite living in a cheap area. Escaping the trap of these cheap rural areas is only difficult for economic reasons - its harder to save money when almost every bit of the low paying job goes to rent - you are spending your time spinning your wheels instead of experimenting, educating yourself or others. > This seems less convincing in the context of your extreme example (before all 400 could work 2 hours/week, other factors will start to matter), but the point is that this is the trend that should have already been happening for the prior decade instead of overleveraging encouraging sink-or-swim overworking. > I'm actually not categorically ruling out the idea of BI. It's just that current calls for it completely ignore any feedback due to our official economic policy, and are actually just a continuation of the broken policy that has largely put us in this situation to begin with. Asset inflation would surely happen in some areas, but we'd at least establish a basic floor. Everything could become higher priced, but it would allow for more fluidity and risk taking, and much more focus on education and learning. I feel like it'd be worthwhile to continue to experiment.