3 ms·

a ubi needn't stop you from working. what it will stop, or at least sharply reduce, is low-paying jobs that are low-paying simply because everyone has to either

by zem 9y ago

a ubi needn't stop you from working. what it will stop, or at least sharply reduce, is low-paying jobs that are low-paying simply because everyone has to either work or starve, and because the job involves easily-replaceable skills. for example, being an amazon warehouse worker is, from all accounts, highly unpleasant, way more so than being an amazon developer. and yet the developers are paid a lot more. why? amazon absolutely needs warehouse workers; its business would collapse without them. but the price for the job is set by how easily they could replace those workers, and that in turn is set by the fact that there are more people who need jobs than there are jobs available. also, look at it this way - there are lots of people who would find it satisfying and fulfilling to be painters, or gardeners, or heck, even nursery school teachers. the only problem is that those jobs don't pay as well as less fulfilling but more valuable to the "owner" class. why is your (and many other people's!) vision of basic income a bunch of zombies sitting around as "mouths to feed", when no one thinks that about people with inherited wealth?

Mz 9y ago
No, what will stop people from working is that the people currently in charge of creating jobs will not bother to create jobs for everyone because "you have your UBI." That's the problem. http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/ubi-is-pc-way-for-tech-giants-to-tell.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/ubi-is-pc-wa...
- zem 9y ago
  the idea that a job is something someone has to "bother to" create and hand to you already buys into the same sort of stratified inequality that you are complaining about with charity. if either way you have to depend on the people with capital and ownership to get money, how is being made to do something for it any better than being given it via the government taxing them and paying you a basic income? also i'm afraid i had to stop reading that blog post at "poor women cranking out babies", because i seriously cannot engage with that sort of thinking right now. however, i will address your earlier point about ubhc being better than ubi - why are you framing it as an either/or thing? ubhc is absolutely the end goal of a civilised society, but it doesn't obviate the need for a basic income, nor does a basic income presuppose the rest of the existing setup continues unchanged.
  - Mz 9y ago
    I am a homeless woman right now. My alimony is roughly the amount of money being batted about as a figure for UBI. I have spent literally years on HN trying to network and figure out how one makes money in earnest on the internet because the only thing I need to make my life work adequately at this point is sufficient online income for supporting a middle class lifestyle. I face enormous obstacles in trying to get taken seriously and trying to get traction for my writing and trying to find out how in the hell you make money online while surrounded by endless men who know how to do exactly that. So I feel pretty strongly that the people currently being left out will just be left out all the more if they have a UBI. Maybe both of those problems can be solved. Maybe it doesn't have to be an either/or thing. But replies like yours in no way inspire me to believe that we can intentionally create a permanent underclass and still give them access to the means to create wealth. I have six years of college and I am finding it a huge uphill battle, in part because I am a woman. And poor women would start cranking out babies if you posit that we give everyone in the nation a check from birth, a thing I have written about before: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsolete-before-we-opened.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsol...
    - zem 9y ago
      what about all the people who work long, hard hours (often doing two or three jobs), who still don't attain a middle class lifestyle? do you think, given the option of a ubi and those jobs, they would still continue to do them? the lack of basic income adds a huge distortion to the equation of "the work you do is worth X to me, but i will pay you Y for it, and X can be way greater than Y because your side of the balance sheet is Y + not starving". also, where do you get "permanent underclass" from? if you posit that there is some way to acquire skills that are so valuable people will pay you a middle-class salary for them, surely acquiring those skills is easier if you don't have to also do a laborious and crappy job at the same time. contrariwise, if you think that someone on pure ubi is doomed never to be able to transition from there to a job, what in that equation changes if you give that person a minimum-wage job instead of ubi?
      - 9y ago

by zem 9y ago

Mz 9y ago

No, what will stop people from working is that the people currently in charge of creating jobs will not bother to create jobs for everyone because "you have your UBI." That's the problem. http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/ubi-is-pc-way-for-tech-giants-to-tell.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/ubi-is-pc-wa...

zem 9y ago
the idea that a job is something someone has to "bother to" create and hand to you already buys into the same sort of stratified inequality that you are complaining about with charity. if either way you have to depend on the people with capital and ownership to get money, how is being made to do something for it any better than being given it via the government taxing them and paying you a basic income? also i'm afraid i had to stop reading that blog post at "poor women cranking out babies", because i seriously cannot engage with that sort of thinking right now. however, i will address your earlier point about ubhc being better than ubi - why are you framing it as an either/or thing? ubhc is absolutely the end goal of a civilised society, but it doesn't obviate the need for a basic income, nor does a basic income presuppose the rest of the existing setup continues unchanged.
- Mz 9y ago
  I am a homeless woman right now. My alimony is roughly the amount of money being batted about as a figure for UBI. I have spent literally years on HN trying to network and figure out how one makes money in earnest on the internet because the only thing I need to make my life work adequately at this point is sufficient online income for supporting a middle class lifestyle. I face enormous obstacles in trying to get taken seriously and trying to get traction for my writing and trying to find out how in the hell you make money online while surrounded by endless men who know how to do exactly that. So I feel pretty strongly that the people currently being left out will just be left out all the more if they have a UBI. Maybe both of those problems can be solved. Maybe it doesn't have to be an either/or thing. But replies like yours in no way inspire me to believe that we can intentionally create a permanent underclass and still give them access to the means to create wealth. I have six years of college and I am finding it a huge uphill battle, in part because I am a woman. And poor women would start cranking out babies if you posit that we give everyone in the nation a check from birth, a thing I have written about before: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsolete-before-we-opened.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsol...
  - zem 9y ago
    what about all the people who work long, hard hours (often doing two or three jobs), who still don't attain a middle class lifestyle? do you think, given the option of a ubi and those jobs, they would still continue to do them? the lack of basic income adds a huge distortion to the equation of "the work you do is worth X to me, but i will pay you Y for it, and X can be way greater than Y because your side of the balance sheet is Y + not starving". also, where do you get "permanent underclass" from? if you posit that there is some way to acquire skills that are so valuable people will pay you a middle-class salary for them, surely acquiring those skills is easier if you don't have to also do a laborious and crappy job at the same time. contrariwise, if you think that someone on pure ubi is doomed never to be able to transition from there to a job, what in that equation changes if you give that person a minimum-wage job instead of ubi?
    - 9y ago