4 ms·

People want BI/welfare state/etc now, and we are in a world with a huge labor scarcity. Let's drop it now and take up the issue after we reach post scarcity, w

People want BI/welfare state/etc now, and we are in a world with a huge labor scarcity. Let's drop it now and take up the issue after we reach post scarcity, when it's so cheap to provide that no one cares about it.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
I don't know where that idea is coming from. There are a hundred million Americans under-employed and soon to be replaced with automation. This is an urgent issue. Already clothes and basic food is so cheap as to be almost free here (the store cost is a fad/fashion tax; clothing is made in factories at pennies a garment).
- emiliobumachar 10y ago
  Ah, but people still want to be in fashion, don't they? If you take people's wants into account, as opposed to their needs according to abstract principles, we're not yet in a post-scarcity society.
  - leonhandreke 10y ago
    Maybe many people would not develop the wish to buy fashionable clothes, a bigger car or a faster smartphone if there weren't adverts and people all around us suggesting that that's the right thing to do. I hope that humans aren't intrinsically consumerist, but I honestly don't know. Does anybody know if research has been don one this topic?
    - ahartman00 10y ago
      You have it backwards. Advertising works because advertisers know what people want. And people WANT social status. "We even find that relative income is more important than absolute income in explaining individual well-being. More precisely, we find that the income relative to individuals’ own cohort working in the same occupation group and living in the same region matters for happiness" [1] "To the conspicuous consumer, such a public display of discretionary economic power is a means of either attaining or maintaining a given social status." [2] 1. http://www.uh.edu/~cguven/papers/JonesesCahit_SEP262007.pdf http://www.uh.edu/~cguven/papers/JonesesCahit_SEP262007.pdf 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption
      - czep 10y ago
        These conspicuous consumers are only fooling themselves. If my neighbor spends 4x on his car compared to me, it certainly doesn't make me feel inferior in any way. If anything it makes me feel sorry for him -- must be overcompensating for some other shortcoming. Yes I've read Veblen so I understand the theory and psychology behind these tactics that advertising exploits (especially luxury advertising), but there are plenty of people, men and women, for whom such shallow status markers have no effect.
        ahartman00 10y ago
        These conspicuous consumers... are a very important part of the economy :) Think about how many engineering and design jobs there are just creating fancier/faster/prettier/etc versions of basic goods. And if the consumer if happy, whats wrong? A lot of that money would just be sitting in a bank somewhere otherwise. Yes, I know some people would donate it to charity. "but there are plenty of people, men and women, for whom " Sorry, I didn't mean to generalize all people. I should have said "a large portion of people".
  - pault 10y ago
    If you take wants into account, we will never be in a post-scarcity society.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Those people refuse to work as maids, caring for the elderly, picking crops (remember how we need immigrants to do jobs that Americans just won't do?) and similar. They are not underemployed, they prefer not to work. Go read the article I linked.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > They are not underemployed, they prefer not to work. Go read the article I linked. "Prefer not to work" is not a reasonable summary of the article. "Receive no benefit from working" is the real problem. Not only do low income people in the US lose almost all of their earnings to government benefits phase outs, taking a job incurs expenses. You need transportation to the job, potentially to move to an area with an overall higher cost of living, pay someone to do things you can no longer do yourself because you're busy working, etc. The result is that for low income people in the US, taking a job can easily cause you to lose money. Which is the thing a UBI fixes, because there is no phase out other than normal taxes, so you keep >=70% of your earnings and taking a job will actually put more money in your pocket.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      A basic job also fixes the disincentives - you work regardless, only question is if it's a bad govt job or a better private one. A basic job also costs a lot less since it only goes to people who need it.
      - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
        The problem is it doesn't actually cost less. The taxes you pay for your own UBI cost you nothing. Meanwhile a basic job has the potential to be very expensive, because unlike a UBI you can't supplement it by working since you're spending your time doing the basic job, so it has to pay a living wage, which is more than the amount you would have to pay as a UBI. And then you will have people who choose the basic job when they would otherwise have chosen an economically productive real job since it's one or the other, which you then have to pay for while at the same time losing the tax revenue you would have had from them doing the real job. And what happens if too many people choose the basic job so that there are too many unfilled real jobs? With a UBI you can reduce the amount to push more people into the labor force. With a basic job which workers can't supplement with a real job, reducing the amount causes them to starve.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

I don't know where that idea is coming from. There are a hundred million Americans under-employed and soon to be replaced with automation. This is an urgent issue. Already clothes and basic food is so cheap as to be almost free here (the store cost is a fad/fashion tax; clothing is made in factories at pennies a garment).

emiliobumachar 10y ago
Ah, but people still want to be in fashion, don't they? If you take people's wants into account, as opposed to their needs according to abstract principles, we're not yet in a post-scarcity society.
- leonhandreke 10y ago
  Maybe many people would not develop the wish to buy fashionable clothes, a bigger car or a faster smartphone if there weren't adverts and people all around us suggesting that that's the right thing to do. I hope that humans aren't intrinsically consumerist, but I honestly don't know. Does anybody know if research has been don one this topic?
  - ahartman00 10y ago
    You have it backwards. Advertising works because advertisers know what people want. And people WANT social status. "We even find that relative income is more important than absolute income in explaining individual well-being. More precisely, we find that the income relative to individuals’ own cohort working in the same occupation group and living in the same region matters for happiness" [1] "To the conspicuous consumer, such a public display of discretionary economic power is a means of either attaining or maintaining a given social status." [2] 1. http://www.uh.edu/~cguven/papers/JonesesCahit_SEP262007.pdf http://www.uh.edu/~cguven/papers/JonesesCahit_SEP262007.pdf 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption
    - czep 10y ago
      These conspicuous consumers are only fooling themselves. If my neighbor spends 4x on his car compared to me, it certainly doesn't make me feel inferior in any way. If anything it makes me feel sorry for him -- must be overcompensating for some other shortcoming. Yes I've read Veblen so I understand the theory and psychology behind these tactics that advertising exploits (especially luxury advertising), but there are plenty of people, men and women, for whom such shallow status markers have no effect.
      - ahartman00 10y ago
        These conspicuous consumers... are a very important part of the economy :) Think about how many engineering and design jobs there are just creating fancier/faster/prettier/etc versions of basic goods. And if the consumer if happy, whats wrong? A lot of that money would just be sitting in a bank somewhere otherwise. Yes, I know some people would donate it to charity. "but there are plenty of people, men and women, for whom " Sorry, I didn't mean to generalize all people. I should have said "a large portion of people".
- pault 10y ago
  If you take wants into account, we will never be in a post-scarcity society.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
Those people refuse to work as maids, caring for the elderly, picking crops (remember how we need immigrants to do jobs that Americans just won't do?) and similar. They are not underemployed, they prefer not to work. Go read the article I linked.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > They are not underemployed, they prefer not to work. Go read the article I linked. "Prefer not to work" is not a reasonable summary of the article. "Receive no benefit from working" is the real problem. Not only do low income people in the US lose almost all of their earnings to government benefits phase outs, taking a job incurs expenses. You need transportation to the job, potentially to move to an area with an overall higher cost of living, pay someone to do things you can no longer do yourself because you're busy working, etc. The result is that for low income people in the US, taking a job can easily cause you to lose money. Which is the thing a UBI fixes, because there is no phase out other than normal taxes, so you keep >=70% of your earnings and taking a job will actually put more money in your pocket.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    A basic job also fixes the disincentives - you work regardless, only question is if it's a bad govt job or a better private one. A basic job also costs a lot less since it only goes to people who need it.
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      The problem is it doesn't actually cost less. The taxes you pay for your own UBI cost you nothing. Meanwhile a basic job has the potential to be very expensive, because unlike a UBI you can't supplement it by working since you're spending your time doing the basic job, so it has to pay a living wage, which is more than the amount you would have to pay as a UBI. And then you will have people who choose the basic job when they would otherwise have chosen an economically productive real job since it's one or the other, which you then have to pay for while at the same time losing the tax revenue you would have had from them doing the real job. And what happens if too many people choose the basic job so that there are too many unfilled real jobs? With a UBI you can reduce the amount to push more people into the labor force. With a basic job which workers can't supplement with a real job, reducing the amount causes them to starve.