6 ms·

Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but m

by ako 10y ago

Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but most people had a lousy job, that involved very little effort. The first time i came to the US, i got the same feeling, lots of meaningless jobs (lift boy, parking lot attendant, grocery store bag filler) that i didn't see in the Netherlands. Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income? At least with UBI people can decide for themselves how they create a meaningful daily activity.

ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
Street promoters make me sad. If they can find no job they better stay at home and learn something new, but they have no time for it, so they are stuck doing useless, maybe even harmful, work.
- dbg31415 10y ago
  I've met someone who spun a sign for a living... he was a huge stoner... I love weed, but he clearly smoked too much of it while his brain was still developing and he could barely hold a conversation... Now... maybe he was self-medicating or whatever... but the point was he failed out of high school, failed out of a few jobs... and then ended up spinning a sign because he really had no meaningful skill to contribute to society. (And I think he failed at showing up to work so he lost that job eventually...) I suspect most people who are in really shit jobs are there because they have issues... they can't show up on time, they don't follow employment rules, or they have something just wrong with them (they are sex-offenders, or have untreated behavioral issues or whatever)... not the sort of people who should be empowered to just sit around. I will go so far as to say nobody who really has potential ends up spinning a sign for very long... they use the job to cover their rent, and they find a way to get a better job. Anyway I don't want to come off as against a UBI, I but I've never met someone who benefited by sitting around doing nothing. I think it's bad for people to be lazy -- like fundamentally brain-rotting to sit around being idle. I like the idea of a UBI that's tied to doing something... anything... getting outside and picking up trash in the road ditches even... or getting vocational training (which we should find a way to make free)... or getting mental health treatment... Prove you have a regular paycheck, or prove you are clocking in 30 hours at some "just move your body" type of approved activity every week to qualify.
  - jusq2 10y ago
    Agree. While we are making recommendations about what people with issues should be doing with themselves, let me add, on the other end of the spectrum - overconfident, mindlessly ambitious characters in society, should be sent off to explore the deep sea, climb mountains etc. So that whatever random goal they are chasing has minimal impact on society at large.
  - acjohnson55 10y ago
    At any given time, some fraction of people are going to be burnouts. That's just a fact. I think they still deserve a baseline of wellbeing, without judgment. If they use it to better themselves, great. If not, oh well. But we spend so much time and effort trying to pick the winners rather than simply giving people a minimal foundation. For those of us with work ethic (the vast majority of everyone, to varying extents), our extra effort will be rewarded by the market, if we do something that other people find valuable, or intrinsically, if we're just doing what we love.
    - dbg31415 10y ago
      I think UBI have a hard time gaining traction in the US. You're asking me to pay higher taxes to have an outcome where someone can actually do less than they currently do to contribute to society. UBI is a very interesting concept, but in order to sell it you'd have to have a phased approach... one of the phases I think would have to include some sort of checks and balances.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > Street promoters make me sad. If they can find no job they better stay at home and learn something new, but they have no time for it, so they are stuck doing useless, maybe even harmful, work. If these people really have such a large earning potential if they were just learning something new, why not let coworkers get together and finance a fund: The worker (let's call him John Doe) will get his existing income for, say, 2 years, financed by the coworkers together. John Doe on the other hand is of course obligated to learn something new (what exactly is agreed upon beforehand). After these two years for the next, say, five years John Doe has to donate, say, 40% of his gross income back to the coworkers who financed him this opportunity. Both sides should be willing to agree on such a deal: John Doe gets his opportunity to learn new things and (hopefully) get a much better job afterwards and his coworkers will (hopefully) get a lot more money back than they originally invested.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    These contracts are really hard to enforce, and is essentially selling equity in yourself. If you sell 100% of your own equity, that'd be pretty much slavery right? Some people (maybe justifiably) feel very uncomfortable with the idea of selling their own future equity. For one thing, it reduces the incentives for someone to work hard. Yale did something like this in the 70s and finally killed it because of issues with how it was structured. Also it felt really unfair to high wage earners that they were sometimes paying multiples of what their tuition originally was. Oregon is trying this out now [2]. [1] http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2001/03/27/70s-debt-program-finally-ending/ http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2001/03/27/70s-debt-program-fi... [2] http://www.salon.com/2015/03/26/two_years_after_signing_of_landmark_law_oregon_awaits_innovative_free_tuition_plan/ http://www.salon.com/2015/03/26/two_years_after_signing_of_l...
    - wolfgke 10y ago
      > For one thing, it reduces the incentives for someone to work hard. If you work harder, you will still have more money - that's what % is about. > Some people (maybe justifiably) feel very uncomfortable with the idea of selling their own future equity. If they have a problem with that, then they should negate something like "40% for every gross dollar over 1000 per month". You are > Also it felt really unfair to high wage earners that they were sometimes paying multiples of what their tuition originally was. That's why I wrote "coworkers", so that it is not a "poor workers against big bank" scheme but "poor workers invest in one of their peer" - this is a lot more at eye level. If the coworkers agree to less - fine. If you are more on the social side: Why not simply invest the, say, 40% into financing the education of the next "poor worker"?
Koshkin 10y ago
> In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but most people had a lousy job, that involved very little effort. I find this hard to believe. Why would a job "in communistic days" be different from, well, a job?
- ako 10y ago
  Because there was a job for everyone. Government had to create a job for everyone. See: http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-19-1-a-life-under-communism-in-eastern-europe http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-19-1-a-... "In the workplace, almost everyone had a job. Wages,however, lagged far behind those in the Western democracies. A common joke was, "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." But rents, goods, and services were far cheaper than in the West."
  - Koshkin 10y ago
    > job for everyone You are implying that this was dictated by political rather than economical reasons, but that may be not entirely correct. > we pretend to work This is true - for some workers. Thing is, the Western society in not and has never been different in this regard. And, some of the "job creation" policies could exacerbate the problem even more.
    - ako 10y ago
      Yes, some jobs are the same here. The main question is: do you create a job because there's some work to be done, or do you create a job because somebody needs a job?
      - Koshkin 10y ago
        Do you have an evidence of the latter, or this is purely hypothetical? (An honest question.)
        ako 10y ago
crdoconnor 10y ago
>Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. * Hoover Dam * Lincoln Tunnel * LAX * LaGuardia Airport Just a few examples of things created by jobs created primarily to give people work. >Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band?
- closeparen 10y ago
  Those things weren't created primarily to give people work, they were created to fulfill demand for electricity and transportation, respectively. If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic. We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    >Those things weren't created primarily to give people work They absolutely were. They were created under the auspices of the Public Works Administration (originally Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works) - part of the 1933 New Deal: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/135.html https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/1... "Functions: Administered a comprehensive public works program to promote and stabilize employment." >If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic. That does not change the fact that these infrastructure works were created primarily to give the unemployed jobs and wouldn't have existed without it. >We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China. Some of the infrastructure is like that but most has enough users to justify its existence. Their infrastructure-building binge isn't crazy. Our intentional lack of infrastructural improvement (which is entirely about artificially throttling employment and wage growth) is crazy.
    - 10y ago
mc32 10y ago
Yes, but it depends on how people see or interpret their jobs. If you really see meaning in bagging someone's groceries, then it's valuable. If you see meaning in giving people the stop/go signal at a garage in Japan, then it's meaningful. If one goes to Japan, one might think one sees a number of geriatrics doing needless or meaningless jobs --on the other hand, if you look carefully, for many of these people that simple job gives them meaning in life. They actually take pride in doing their job dutifully and faithfully with pride --things someone from the US would scoff at or think ridiculous. So, it just requires a re-framing.

by ako 10y ago

ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago

Street promoters make me sad. If they can find no job they better stay at home and learn something new, but they have no time for it, so they are stuck doing useless, maybe even harmful, work.

dbg31415 10y ago
I've met someone who spun a sign for a living... he was a huge stoner... I love weed, but he clearly smoked too much of it while his brain was still developing and he could barely hold a conversation... Now... maybe he was self-medicating or whatever... but the point was he failed out of high school, failed out of a few jobs... and then ended up spinning a sign because he really had no meaningful skill to contribute to society. (And I think he failed at showing up to work so he lost that job eventually...) I suspect most people who are in really shit jobs are there because they have issues... they can't show up on time, they don't follow employment rules, or they have something just wrong with them (they are sex-offenders, or have untreated behavioral issues or whatever)... not the sort of people who should be empowered to just sit around. I will go so far as to say nobody who really has potential ends up spinning a sign for very long... they use the job to cover their rent, and they find a way to get a better job. Anyway I don't want to come off as against a UBI, I but I've never met someone who benefited by sitting around doing nothing. I think it's bad for people to be lazy -- like fundamentally brain-rotting to sit around being idle. I like the idea of a UBI that's tied to doing something... anything... getting outside and picking up trash in the road ditches even... or getting vocational training (which we should find a way to make free)... or getting mental health treatment... Prove you have a regular paycheck, or prove you are clocking in 30 hours at some "just move your body" type of approved activity every week to qualify.
- jusq2 10y ago
  Agree. While we are making recommendations about what people with issues should be doing with themselves, let me add, on the other end of the spectrum - overconfident, mindlessly ambitious characters in society, should be sent off to explore the deep sea, climb mountains etc. So that whatever random goal they are chasing has minimal impact on society at large.
- acjohnson55 10y ago
  At any given time, some fraction of people are going to be burnouts. That's just a fact. I think they still deserve a baseline of wellbeing, without judgment. If they use it to better themselves, great. If not, oh well. But we spend so much time and effort trying to pick the winners rather than simply giving people a minimal foundation. For those of us with work ethic (the vast majority of everyone, to varying extents), our extra effort will be rewarded by the market, if we do something that other people find valuable, or intrinsically, if we're just doing what we love.
  - dbg31415 10y ago
    I think UBI have a hard time gaining traction in the US. You're asking me to pay higher taxes to have an outcome where someone can actually do less than they currently do to contribute to society. UBI is a very interesting concept, but in order to sell it you'd have to have a phased approach... one of the phases I think would have to include some sort of checks and balances.
wolfgke 10y ago
> Street promoters make me sad. If they can find no job they better stay at home and learn something new, but they have no time for it, so they are stuck doing useless, maybe even harmful, work. If these people really have such a large earning potential if they were just learning something new, why not let coworkers get together and finance a fund: The worker (let's call him John Doe) will get his existing income for, say, 2 years, financed by the coworkers together. John Doe on the other hand is of course obligated to learn something new (what exactly is agreed upon beforehand). After these two years for the next, say, five years John Doe has to donate, say, 40% of his gross income back to the coworkers who financed him this opportunity. Both sides should be willing to agree on such a deal: John Doe gets his opportunity to learn new things and (hopefully) get a much better job afterwards and his coworkers will (hopefully) get a lot more money back than they originally invested.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  These contracts are really hard to enforce, and is essentially selling equity in yourself. If you sell 100% of your own equity, that'd be pretty much slavery right? Some people (maybe justifiably) feel very uncomfortable with the idea of selling their own future equity. For one thing, it reduces the incentives for someone to work hard. Yale did something like this in the 70s and finally killed it because of issues with how it was structured. Also it felt really unfair to high wage earners that they were sometimes paying multiples of what their tuition originally was. Oregon is trying this out now [2]. [1] http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2001/03/27/70s-debt-program-finally-ending/ http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2001/03/27/70s-debt-program-fi... [2] http://www.salon.com/2015/03/26/two_years_after_signing_of_landmark_law_oregon_awaits_innovative_free_tuition_plan/ http://www.salon.com/2015/03/26/two_years_after_signing_of_l...
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > For one thing, it reduces the incentives for someone to work hard. If you work harder, you will still have more money - that's what % is about. > Some people (maybe justifiably) feel very uncomfortable with the idea of selling their own future equity. If they have a problem with that, then they should negate something like "40% for every gross dollar over 1000 per month". You are > Also it felt really unfair to high wage earners that they were sometimes paying multiples of what their tuition originally was. That's why I wrote "coworkers", so that it is not a "poor workers against big bank" scheme but "poor workers invest in one of their peer" - this is a lot more at eye level. If the coworkers agree to less - fine. If you are more on the social side: Why not simply invest the, say, 40% into financing the education of the next "poor worker"?

Koshkin 10y ago

> In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but most people had a lousy job, that involved very little effort. I find this hard to believe. Why would a job "in communistic days" be different from, well, a job?

ako 10y ago
Because there was a job for everyone. Government had to create a job for everyone. See: http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-19-1-a-life-under-communism-in-eastern-europe http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-19-1-a-... "In the workplace, almost everyone had a job. Wages,however, lagged far behind those in the Western democracies. A common joke was, "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." But rents, goods, and services were far cheaper than in the West."
- Koshkin 10y ago
  > job for everyone You are implying that this was dictated by political rather than economical reasons, but that may be not entirely correct. > we pretend to work This is true - for some workers. Thing is, the Western society in not and has never been different in this regard. And, some of the "job creation" policies could exacerbate the problem even more.
  - ako 10y ago
    Yes, some jobs are the same here. The main question is: do you create a job because there's some work to be done, or do you create a job because somebody needs a job?
    - Koshkin 10y ago
      Do you have an evidence of the latter, or this is purely hypothetical? (An honest question.)
      - ako 10y ago

crdoconnor 10y ago

>Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. * Hoover Dam * Lincoln Tunnel * LAX * LaGuardia Airport Just a few examples of things created by jobs created primarily to give people work. >Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band?

closeparen 10y ago
Those things weren't created primarily to give people work, they were created to fulfill demand for electricity and transportation, respectively. If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic. We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >Those things weren't created primarily to give people work They absolutely were. They were created under the auspices of the Public Works Administration (originally Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works) - part of the 1933 New Deal: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/135.html https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/1... "Functions: Administered a comprehensive public works program to promote and stabilize employment." >If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic. That does not change the fact that these infrastructure works were created primarily to give the unemployed jobs and wouldn't have existed without it. >We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China. Some of the infrastructure is like that but most has enough users to justify its existence. Their infrastructure-building binge isn't crazy. Our intentional lack of infrastructural improvement (which is entirely about artificially throttling employment and wage growth) is crazy.
  - 10y ago

mc32 10y ago

Yes, but it depends on how people see or interpret their jobs. If you really see meaning in bagging someone's groceries, then it's valuable. If you see meaning in giving people the stop/go signal at a garage in Japan, then it's meaningful. If one goes to Japan, one might think one sees a number of geriatrics doing needless or meaningless jobs --on the other hand, if you look carefully, for many of these people that simple job gives them meaning in life. They actually take pride in doing their job dutifully and faithfully with pride --things someone from the US would scoff at or think ridiculous. So, it just requires a re-framing.