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I honestly feel basic income is a MUST have. I so much believe in it that I WANT the automation to come, I want to see the jobs disappear, I live for the day wh

I honestly feel basic income is a MUST have. I so much believe in it that I WANT the automation to come, I want to see the jobs disappear, I live for the day when robots do all the physical work and a job is optional--and we can pick and choose what we work on because having a roof over our head and food on the table, and healthcare is just a given. We can be entrepreneurs, etc.. I have a ton of app ideas, but I work 45-50 hours a week and just don't have much time to implement anything. -- Even if we moved to 20 hours / week w/ lots of time for family, and leisure. Mankind is supposed to rule the world, not be beasts of burden, and many are just that. Some horses live better than mankind. We have a friend who works at walmart and two other jobs, so his wife can stay home and take care of the kids. It's sad and pathetic - nobody should have to work over 40 hours just to have a house and home. I think before that day comes there will be unrest and revolts, maybe even French revolution style, but in the end there has to be a better way.

retube 10y ago
So far automation has not resulted in net fewer jobs, but more productive jobs replacing more mundane ones. That has been the story throughout human history. I see no evidence that is going to change. Indeed "AI" has so far only created jobs, not killed them.
- pikzen 10y ago
  >So far automation has not resulted in net fewer jobs Yes. Yes it has. Manufacturing has seen hundred of thousands of jobs replaced. And the amount of software developers or maintenance jobs created to make that work doesn't even begin to cover what has been lost. As far as job creation goes, guess you'll have to check that up with the ever growing percentage of unemployment throughout first world countries.
  - retube 10y ago
    yes there's less manufacturing jobs. There's also less farming jobs, and less clerical jobs, and fewer blacksmiths, cobblers, seamstresses and about a 1,000 other professions too. But the developed world is at near full employment.
    - JDiculous 10y ago
      Full employment is a meaningless metric. If 90% of the workforce is working meaningless minimum wage jobs and barely making ends meet, the economy is at "full employment", but that doesn't mean we're doing well. Full unemployment also doesn't take into account the labor participation rate, which has been on a downward trend.
    - candiodari 10y ago
      And ever since 1990 or so the percentage of the population that is working has dropped. Very slowly at first, then much, much faster since 2008. We're currently at ~5% less employed, relative to total population than before. Granted, there are more employed persons total, but population is growing faster. Therefore the experience that people keep referring to, that less people have jobs (relative to the total they know), is accurate (not in the Bay Area, though only by the slimmest of margins. It is not far from the truth that employment has been stagnant for coming up on 30 years even there). In the US 152 million people have a job, for a total of 321.6 million people total, plus about 12 million (wtf) illegal immigrants. So in the US, today, a little under 46% of the population is employed. 10 years ago that was about 47% and it was over 55% in 1990, about when the decline started. That means, of course, that the economic value a single individual provides today has to be distributed over 1/46%, or 2.1 individuals, whereas it used to be only 1.8. Since the financial crisis there has, from this perspective, been no recovery. In fact, things continued to become systematically worse since 1990 (but with a huge dive downward in 2008). There is an uptic since middle 2015, but, frankly, that looks a lot more like a blip than a recovery. Granted, in Europe, the situation is much worse, especially in Southern Europe (but it will be as bad in Northern Europe in a decade or so, as we're getting close to the point that even the massive and very much unsustainable immigration Europe is experiencing cannot keep those countries' labour forces from declining). And of course, this situation is about half due to baby boomers retiring and half due to people "leaving the labor force" (having 2 family members who have "left the labor force" I feel the scare quotes are justified. They have not left the labor force voluntarily) This is also disregarding that there has been a massive shift from manufacturing into service jobs. The problem with that is that it's a massive shift from $25/hour unionized, rigid hours, stable jobs for decades, with benefits into $9/hour without benefits, shifting hours, no unions, jobs lasting about 1.5 years, tops. That has happened, over the last 20 years, to close to 20% of the labor force, or over 30 million people.
JDiculous 10y ago
The average adult hunter-gatherer only worked about 22 hours [1] We've advanced so much technologically, yet we're working more than hunter-gatherers were hundreds of thousands of years ago. What are we working towards again? [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201611/instead-job-creation-how-about-less-work https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201611/in...
- candiodari 10y ago
  > What are we working towards again? Having a worldwide population of more than 10000 people ? What I don't get about basic income is the incentives this would bring, which invalidate the whole thing. It's not a Nash equilibrium. What this would create is a huge class of 100% dependent people who have no power, entitlement and are in a very unfair relationship (to their advantage) with the rest of humanity (by current standards). The productive group will hate the basic income receivers because they "steal" money. And the basic income receivers will hate the productive group because they'll be the ones constantly saying "no you can't have any more", "no we can't do that", "no we can't save your little girl by dedicated 50 medical personnel to just her", "no no no no no no" ... And while I don't believe in Ayn Rand, I do believe that the productive group can leave. This will bring tensions and hate between the productive side of the population, which will be only a few, and the rest. The government, of course, will be in the pocket of the productive side, because they represent (and control to some extent) the limits of what is realistically/economically possible. The smaller the productive group, the more clout they'll have. Eventually they will get rid of the basic income receivers.
  - gremlinsinc 10y ago
    That's not the case though because THEY are basic income receivers too -- EVERYONE receives even the 1% and elites. That's one thing that makes it better than current welfare. People on welfare KNOW they're 'leeches' and with that comes a stigma of being a trashy person because you can't get enough jobs to supply enough income for your family. Take away welfare, give everyone the same amount monthly, and it's a citizenship 'right' or contract for being a good citizen of the United States. The only stipulation is you HAVE to have a physical address to mail the checks to -- meaning if you still for some reason want to be homeless even w/ the added income then you're sol. The goal should be 100% end to starvation and homelessness. On top of that it spurs growth of the economy. When robots do take over and 50% are unemployed -- who will shop at walmart, or amazon? Absolutely nobody. The money will still flow up to the 1% in droves, for the absolute necessities, but eventually even that will drip dry. Give money to the poorer people though and they end up spending 100% of whatever they make usually. This goes right back to the Walton's most likely, but it increases economic power, and gdp. I also think if you give everyone enough to be across the poverty line, then we could move to a flat SALES tax over income which would have lower tax for legal citizens / etc and more for those who are undocumented, or travelling through the states. Then we could alter and adjust the national sales tax every year or so based on whether we have a surplus or deficit. We can also do away w/ the IRS completely and end more bureacracy.

retube 10y ago

So far automation has not resulted in net fewer jobs, but more productive jobs replacing more mundane ones. That has been the story throughout human history. I see no evidence that is going to change. Indeed "AI" has so far only created jobs, not killed them.

pikzen 10y ago
>So far automation has not resulted in net fewer jobs Yes. Yes it has. Manufacturing has seen hundred of thousands of jobs replaced. And the amount of software developers or maintenance jobs created to make that work doesn't even begin to cover what has been lost. As far as job creation goes, guess you'll have to check that up with the ever growing percentage of unemployment throughout first world countries.
- retube 10y ago
  yes there's less manufacturing jobs. There's also less farming jobs, and less clerical jobs, and fewer blacksmiths, cobblers, seamstresses and about a 1,000 other professions too. But the developed world is at near full employment.
  - JDiculous 10y ago
    Full employment is a meaningless metric. If 90% of the workforce is working meaningless minimum wage jobs and barely making ends meet, the economy is at "full employment", but that doesn't mean we're doing well. Full unemployment also doesn't take into account the labor participation rate, which has been on a downward trend.
  - candiodari 10y ago
    And ever since 1990 or so the percentage of the population that is working has dropped. Very slowly at first, then much, much faster since 2008. We're currently at ~5% less employed, relative to total population than before. Granted, there are more employed persons total, but population is growing faster. Therefore the experience that people keep referring to, that less people have jobs (relative to the total they know), is accurate (not in the Bay Area, though only by the slimmest of margins. It is not far from the truth that employment has been stagnant for coming up on 30 years even there). In the US 152 million people have a job, for a total of 321.6 million people total, plus about 12 million (wtf) illegal immigrants. So in the US, today, a little under 46% of the population is employed. 10 years ago that was about 47% and it was over 55% in 1990, about when the decline started. That means, of course, that the economic value a single individual provides today has to be distributed over 1/46%, or 2.1 individuals, whereas it used to be only 1.8. Since the financial crisis there has, from this perspective, been no recovery. In fact, things continued to become systematically worse since 1990 (but with a huge dive downward in 2008). There is an uptic since middle 2015, but, frankly, that looks a lot more like a blip than a recovery. Granted, in Europe, the situation is much worse, especially in Southern Europe (but it will be as bad in Northern Europe in a decade or so, as we're getting close to the point that even the massive and very much unsustainable immigration Europe is experiencing cannot keep those countries' labour forces from declining). And of course, this situation is about half due to baby boomers retiring and half due to people "leaving the labor force" (having 2 family members who have "left the labor force" I feel the scare quotes are justified. They have not left the labor force voluntarily) This is also disregarding that there has been a massive shift from manufacturing into service jobs. The problem with that is that it's a massive shift from $25/hour unionized, rigid hours, stable jobs for decades, with benefits into $9/hour without benefits, shifting hours, no unions, jobs lasting about 1.5 years, tops. That has happened, over the last 20 years, to close to 20% of the labor force, or over 30 million people.

JDiculous 10y ago

The average adult hunter-gatherer only worked about 22 hours [1] We've advanced so much technologically, yet we're working more than hunter-gatherers were hundreds of thousands of years ago. What are we working towards again? [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201611/instead-job-creation-how-about-less-work https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201611/in...

candiodari 10y ago
> What are we working towards again? Having a worldwide population of more than 10000 people ? What I don't get about basic income is the incentives this would bring, which invalidate the whole thing. It's not a Nash equilibrium. What this would create is a huge class of 100% dependent people who have no power, entitlement and are in a very unfair relationship (to their advantage) with the rest of humanity (by current standards). The productive group will hate the basic income receivers because they "steal" money. And the basic income receivers will hate the productive group because they'll be the ones constantly saying "no you can't have any more", "no we can't do that", "no we can't save your little girl by dedicated 50 medical personnel to just her", "no no no no no no" ... And while I don't believe in Ayn Rand, I do believe that the productive group can leave. This will bring tensions and hate between the productive side of the population, which will be only a few, and the rest. The government, of course, will be in the pocket of the productive side, because they represent (and control to some extent) the limits of what is realistically/economically possible. The smaller the productive group, the more clout they'll have. Eventually they will get rid of the basic income receivers.
- gremlinsinc 10y ago
  That's not the case though because THEY are basic income receivers too -- EVERYONE receives even the 1% and elites. That's one thing that makes it better than current welfare. People on welfare KNOW they're 'leeches' and with that comes a stigma of being a trashy person because you can't get enough jobs to supply enough income for your family. Take away welfare, give everyone the same amount monthly, and it's a citizenship 'right' or contract for being a good citizen of the United States. The only stipulation is you HAVE to have a physical address to mail the checks to -- meaning if you still for some reason want to be homeless even w/ the added income then you're sol. The goal should be 100% end to starvation and homelessness. On top of that it spurs growth of the economy. When robots do take over and 50% are unemployed -- who will shop at walmart, or amazon? Absolutely nobody. The money will still flow up to the 1% in droves, for the absolute necessities, but eventually even that will drip dry. Give money to the poorer people though and they end up spending 100% of whatever they make usually. This goes right back to the Walton's most likely, but it increases economic power, and gdp. I also think if you give everyone enough to be across the poverty line, then we could move to a flat SALES tax over income which would have lower tax for legal citizens / etc and more for those who are undocumented, or travelling through the states. Then we could alter and adjust the national sales tax every year or so based on whether we have a surplus or deficit. We can also do away w/ the IRS completely and end more bureacracy.