4 ms·
A different approach, one in which people can still work to get paid, but wages are reasonable. Fulfillment is not all about the money and what you can buy wit
by aylmao 9y ago
A different approach, one in which people can still work to get paid, but wages are reasonable.
Fulfillment is not all about the money and what you can buy with it. It's about feeling that your'e serving some purpose, and there's value to what you do.
- AnthonyMouse 9y agoThat's what a universal basic income does. It lets the person whose labor is only worth $3/hour take a $3/hour job and still not starve to death.
- floatrock 9y agoI sympathize with the sentiment, but I think your statement could be misread as overly harsh. I would emphasize that money solves all problems measured in money, but humans care about things not measured in money. So faced with a janitorial job making minimum wage $13/hr or a volunteer gig that can only afford a $3/hr stipend, it lets the person take the job that pays more in ways not necessarily measured in money -- it some evolved enlightened form of capitalism that frees us from the serfdom of capitalism itself or some such aggrandization nonsense. But we've been dreaming about the cultured and creative paradise that only a life formed solely on the unlocked potential of leisure could afford since the dawn of the industrial age, so shrug Maaaaybe this time is different...
- matt_wulfeck 9y agoOr a $3/hour jobs becomes a $1 an hour job because markets are incredibly efficient at pricing in a new, free flow of money.
- aylmao 9y agoExactly, which is why even with UBI we need reasonable minimum wages.
- matt_wulfeck 9y agoWhy not take the next logical step and control prices on everything?
- richardwhiuk 9y agoWhy? Minimum wage is largely designed to stop people being exploited by a form of economic slavery, but the UBI should prevent that, and mean that the wage has to be attractive.
- AnthonyMouse 9y agoExcept that the employee can walk away from an employer who doesn't pay enough and still keep the UBI. And the demand for labor at $3/hour is huge. People making even $40K/year would stop doing their own laundry or washing their own cars if they could hire someone to do it for that price. Good luck convincing anyone to work for $1/hour when everyone else is paying more. Moreover, even if someone could only get a job for $1/hour, what is that supposed to change? Then they get a job at $1/hour + UBI, they don't starve, and the second someone offers $2/hour they trade up. Or they decide that their time is worth more than that to themselves and spend it volunteering to gain experience or going to school or whatever. Which one of these is supposed to be a problem?
- aylmao 9y ago> It lets the person whose labor is only worth $3/hour take a $3/hour job and still not starve to death. You'd still know that your labor is worth only $3/hour, and if you're not starving to death it's because you're on this safety net. How is this feeling "you're serving a purpose" and that "there's value in what you do" as per my parent comment? Again, a job is about much more than the money, and "not starving to death".
- bllguo 9y agoSure, ideally everyone gets well-paid, fulfilling jobs... So, when do we start talking about practical solutions?
- aylmao 9y agoA reasonable minimum wage
- AnthonyMouse 9y agoWhat about the people whose labor is not worth your minimum wage?
- bllguo 9y agoI do believe in raising the minimum wage, but how does that address the fact that outsourcing and automation have been reducing and will continue to reduce the supply of jobs? Thousands of people have skills that are not worth enough, these days, to support the lifestyle they are used to. That's the problem here.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago> You'd still know that your labor is worth only $3/hour, and if you're not starving to death it's because you're on this safety net. But your labor is worth only $3/hour. The only way to change that is for the person to improve their skillset, but if that was practical in a given case then it would happen regardless.
- thesagan 9y agoThis would be preferable to me, which is maintaining some degree of power over my own destiny by being able to build my own economic value. I wonder why this is not a well received idea?