4 ms·

It's interesting to understand the primary motivator for UBI around the world. It sounds like the Fins want to use it to take away the minimum wage, while in th

It's interesting to understand the primary motivator for UBI around the world. It sounds like the Fins want to use it to take away the minimum wage, while in the US the primary motivator is to take away the rest of the welfare services.

youdontknowtho 10y ago
That is interesting. I kind of feel like Charlie Brown and the football...If we agree to get rid of the safety net before UBI is implemented, I don't think the conservatives would follow through. I really don't. I don't think that they are interested in co-governance anymore.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Seems obvious. It's like the current talk of repealing the ACA and then replacing it with something later. If you actually mean to replace it, there's no reason not to figure out the replacement first, and do essentially an atomic swap of the two.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    You guys are forgetting that politics is a greedy-search of the issue-space. The typical politician will say whatever it takes to obtain short-term gains in power. Come election time, that means appealing to the base. Come governance time, it means keeping the lobbyists happy and making deals to advance their own career within the legislature. Why have Republicans never taken meaningful action on abortion? Because they wouldn't be able to campaign on it every 2 years. So when it comes to government benefits / entitlements / welfare, the politician must weigh the cost of taking away goodies from the constituents, keeping campaign promises to the base, and keeping lobbyists happy. The choice will be what yields the most short-term political gain. Nobody's talking about making the real tax-code reforms that will lead to long-term benefits: eliminating the mortgage interest deduction and making healthcare benefits taxable as income. Those will never happen because tax rates would go up on the middle-class voters for both parties. But the long-term economic benefits would be excellent. There are other parts of the tax code that make no sense economically but lots of sense politically.
    - aaron-lebo 10y ago
      You are correct. This is politics 101 as put forward by David Mayhew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress:_The_Electoral_Connection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress:_The_Electoral_Connec...
      - clarkmoody 10y ago
        See also: Public Choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice
    - mikeash 10y ago
      I don't think I'm forgetting it so much as pointing it out in a roundabout way. I agree with what you say, and these seemingly weird contradictions in political talk are clearly coming from this.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  I don't think it's quite that bad. It's also not new. He described the passage of the bill as something of a “con-job” that allowed millions of immigrants in the country illegally to have legal status with a promise of workplace enforcement and other measures to curb future illegal immigration. But that didn’t happen, he said. And there was little incentive to follow through on promises of strict workplace enforcement, he said, once millions of people were legalized. “I definitely view this as the 30-year problem,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service under Bill Clinton and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/todays-immigration-debate-rooted-reagan-amnesty-experts-say/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/todays-immigration-debat... Both parties are self-serving and don't trust each other for good reason.
distances 10y ago
Maybe a technical point, but Finland doesn't have a minimum wage as such. Instead, 90% of Finland's workforce is covered by universally binding collective agreements -- no work on a given field can be done cheaper than the minimum dictated by the respective agreement. This includes cases where neither the employer nor the employee is unionized.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Abolishing welfare is the argument that makes it palatable (affordable). But the reason is simpler: automation will put almost all of us out of work. What then? Spiraling consumerism where we all need personal nail polishers? Return to sedan chairs in downtown districts? Abolish home kitchens so we all have to eat out and support chefs? Or, let the robots lift the yoke of labor from our shoulders forever, and turn to other pursuits.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  The problem is that we will still need vital services that computers are still indeterminatably far from accomplishing. Let's say we go full Star Trek and get replicators (with the seemingly limitless energy that is a hallmark of the series unless it's a "dilithium" episode). Great! All the physical needs at the push of a button! But people will still need to develop the replicators, manage supply chains, and so on. Even if a machine managed most of it, people would have to know how to step in when the machine fails, because they will. Bigger problem: medical services. It takes a FUCKING LONG time to become a doctor, and for good reason. So would the many layabouts freed from labor be entitled to top-notch medical services? We're kind of stuck with the shitty system we have until we have far greater technology than we do today to solve our problems. And that assumes that population growth doesn't spiral out of control and that the climate plays along for long enough for our species to get its collective shit together.
  - kstenerud 10y ago
    > But people will still need to develop the replicators, manage supply chains, and so on. Machines can do that. If they break in ways a machine can't fix (a diminishing situation over time), an expert gets paid a lot to fix things. > Bigger problem: medical services. It takes a FUCKING LONG time to become a doctor Whereas a machine will a better doctor than any human could ever be from the moment it rolls off the factory floor. > So would the many layabouts freed from labor be entitled to top-notch medical services? Of course! It'll be dirt cheap to implement anyway (unless you're American). > And that assumes that population growth doesn't spiral out of control Population growth doesn't spiral out of control. We have plenty of studies that prove this. > and that the climate plays along for long enough for our species to get its collective shit together In many places, renewable energy accounts for more than 75% of new capacity. Solar is about to plummet below coal in cost. Electric cars are mainstream, and will over time displace the internal combustion engine. We've got scientists developing cheap carbon absorbers. Meanwhile, we've already passed the point where there simply aren't enough jobs to go around. Just wait till the truck drivers are displaced in a few years! That'll be fun...

youdontknowtho 10y ago

That is interesting. I kind of feel like Charlie Brown and the football...If we agree to get rid of the safety net before UBI is implemented, I don't think the conservatives would follow through. I really don't. I don't think that they are interested in co-governance anymore.

mikeash 10y ago
Seems obvious. It's like the current talk of repealing the ACA and then replacing it with something later. If you actually mean to replace it, there's no reason not to figure out the replacement first, and do essentially an atomic swap of the two.
- clarkmoody 10y ago
  You guys are forgetting that politics is a greedy-search of the issue-space. The typical politician will say whatever it takes to obtain short-term gains in power. Come election time, that means appealing to the base. Come governance time, it means keeping the lobbyists happy and making deals to advance their own career within the legislature. Why have Republicans never taken meaningful action on abortion? Because they wouldn't be able to campaign on it every 2 years. So when it comes to government benefits / entitlements / welfare, the politician must weigh the cost of taking away goodies from the constituents, keeping campaign promises to the base, and keeping lobbyists happy. The choice will be what yields the most short-term political gain. Nobody's talking about making the real tax-code reforms that will lead to long-term benefits: eliminating the mortgage interest deduction and making healthcare benefits taxable as income. Those will never happen because tax rates would go up on the middle-class voters for both parties. But the long-term economic benefits would be excellent. There are other parts of the tax code that make no sense economically but lots of sense politically.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    You are correct. This is politics 101 as put forward by David Mayhew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress:_The_Electoral_Connection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress:_The_Electoral_Connec...
    - clarkmoody 10y ago
      See also: Public Choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice
  - mikeash 10y ago
    I don't think I'm forgetting it so much as pointing it out in a roundabout way. I agree with what you say, and these seemingly weird contradictions in political talk are clearly coming from this.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
I don't think it's quite that bad. It's also not new. He described the passage of the bill as something of a “con-job” that allowed millions of immigrants in the country illegally to have legal status with a promise of workplace enforcement and other measures to curb future illegal immigration. But that didn’t happen, he said. And there was little incentive to follow through on promises of strict workplace enforcement, he said, once millions of people were legalized. “I definitely view this as the 30-year problem,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service under Bill Clinton and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/todays-immigration-debate-rooted-reagan-amnesty-experts-say/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/todays-immigration-debat... Both parties are self-serving and don't trust each other for good reason.

distances 10y ago

Maybe a technical point, but Finland doesn't have a minimum wage as such. Instead, 90% of Finland's workforce is covered by universally binding collective agreements -- no work on a given field can be done cheaper than the minimum dictated by the respective agreement. This includes cases where neither the employer nor the employee is unionized.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Abolishing welfare is the argument that makes it palatable (affordable). But the reason is simpler: automation will put almost all of us out of work. What then? Spiraling consumerism where we all need personal nail polishers? Return to sedan chairs in downtown districts? Abolish home kitchens so we all have to eat out and support chefs? Or, let the robots lift the yoke of labor from our shoulders forever, and turn to other pursuits.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
The problem is that we will still need vital services that computers are still indeterminatably far from accomplishing. Let's say we go full Star Trek and get replicators (with the seemingly limitless energy that is a hallmark of the series unless it's a "dilithium" episode). Great! All the physical needs at the push of a button! But people will still need to develop the replicators, manage supply chains, and so on. Even if a machine managed most of it, people would have to know how to step in when the machine fails, because they will. Bigger problem: medical services. It takes a FUCKING LONG time to become a doctor, and for good reason. So would the many layabouts freed from labor be entitled to top-notch medical services? We're kind of stuck with the shitty system we have until we have far greater technology than we do today to solve our problems. And that assumes that population growth doesn't spiral out of control and that the climate plays along for long enough for our species to get its collective shit together.
- kstenerud 10y ago
  > But people will still need to develop the replicators, manage supply chains, and so on. Machines can do that. If they break in ways a machine can't fix (a diminishing situation over time), an expert gets paid a lot to fix things. > Bigger problem: medical services. It takes a FUCKING LONG time to become a doctor Whereas a machine will a better doctor than any human could ever be from the moment it rolls off the factory floor. > So would the many layabouts freed from labor be entitled to top-notch medical services? Of course! It'll be dirt cheap to implement anyway (unless you're American). > And that assumes that population growth doesn't spiral out of control Population growth doesn't spiral out of control. We have plenty of studies that prove this. > and that the climate plays along for long enough for our species to get its collective shit together In many places, renewable energy accounts for more than 75% of new capacity. Solar is about to plummet below coal in cost. Electric cars are mainstream, and will over time displace the internal combustion engine. We've got scientists developing cheap carbon absorbers. Meanwhile, we've already passed the point where there simply aren't enough jobs to go around. Just wait till the truck drivers are displaced in a few years! That'll be fun...