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> Suppose that it's not, at scale. Then the work still needs to be done, so wage rise until it is enough for enough people. That's a really big and unfounded a

> Suppose that it's not, at scale. Then the work still needs to be done, so wage rise until it is enough for enough people. That's a really big and unfounded assumption. Especially here on HN it's a well-known trope that employers complain that they can't find any engineers when really they can't find any engineers at the price they're willing to pay. Not to mention that there are ceilings for the price of labor - the money for salaries doesn't come from thin air; it generally comes from higher prices. If prices can't raise to the level needed to support the necessary salary, the business and product simply won't exist. Whether this will result, under UBI, in creative destruction, a death spiral for the economy, or it simply won't be a problem at all since people will keep showing up to work anyway, is quite frankly a matter of faith at this point. > If you give the fisherman the first boat to begin with, he doesn't go out and build a fleet, but he's still a fisherman. But there is nothing wrong with being a fisherman. This is the basic trade off in having social programs at all instead of pure ruthless capitalism. Yes, there is something wrong with just being a fisherman. When the fisherman starts a business and grows a fishing fleet, the fisherman creates jobs. If the fisherman just stays a fisherman, those jobs never get created. If most people aren't working, you don't have a tax base to fund UBI (or any other social welfare program) in the first place. If people would rather not work, then adopting UBI is more likely to result in the collapse of the economy, not strengthen it. > Is it "optimal" for people to go home after work and play video games instead of working more? As a matter of fact, yes, because occasional rest and relaxation is an important part of sustaining yourself in the marathon that is your working years. If you wreck your work/life balance with no end in sight then you're going to burn out pretty quickly. > What about developing video games? What about growing tobacco, or mining coal, or building bombs? There are a lot more counter-productive things than sitting in a room and effectively doing nothing. UBI doesn't address any of these issues. They'd all still offer some kind of compensation anyway. If society deems them to be counter-productive, there are other means of countering them - tax policy etc. > It would be a great improvement if all it did was provide exactly the same level of support as existing welfare, but provided it in cash instead of with strings attached This is naive. Food stamps are intended to ensure that people are fed. Housing vouchers are intended to ensure that people have a roof over their heads. If you give people cash instead of food stamps and housing vouchers, people will either have food in their bellies and a roof over their heads, or they won't. If they won't then the moral case for UBI no longer exists (because the moral case for welfare programs will no longer exist). If they will then we're back to the original argument over whether UBI will motivate or demotivate people to work. That UBI costs much less to administer is more or less a fringe benefit compared to the risk that UBI poses to crashing the economy. > If more jobs get replaced by robots Much hype and lost in transit. Most of the gains in automation are due to growth in technology firms, not robots; most of the losses in manufacturing are due to globalization, not robots. There's little evidence showing this to be feasible.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Especially here on HN it's a well-known trope that employers complain that they can't find any engineers when really they can't find any engineers at the price they're willing to pay. And everybody knows they're just saying that to try to import more labor to suppress wages. But then they pay the higher price anyway, which is why engineers are well compensated. > Not to mention that there are ceilings for the price of labor - the money for salaries doesn't come from thin air; it generally comes from higher prices. It can also come from lower corporate margins, but suppose it comes from higher prices. Then some things cost more and there is all the more incentive for people to continue to work because now they need more money to buy the things they want. > If prices can't raise to the level needed to support the necessary salary, the business and product simply won't exist. Only things that wouldn't exist without access to cheap labor, i.e. things with little marginal utility to begin with. > Whether this will result, under UBI, in creative destruction, a death spiral for the economy, or it simply won't be a problem at all since people will keep showing up to work anyway, is quite frankly a matter of faith at this point. It is basically impossible for that to happen from a UBI that only replaces the existing welfare system at the same level of benefits, because it would then provide less disincentive to work than the existing system that conditions benefits on not making money. At that point you can raise the amount gradually and measure the results over time to ensure that you're not doing anything problematic. It's obvious that there is some amount which is "too high" -- it can't be a million dollars a year in current dollars. But it's possible to find the optimal number gradually by experiment without taking any kind of major risk because you're never making a large disruptive change all at once. > Yes, there is something wrong with just being a fisherman. When the fisherman starts a business and grows a fishing fleet, the fisherman creates jobs. If the fisherman just stays a fisherman, those jobs never get created. Except that they do, because the other people also want to be fisherman, but now they all get to be their own boss because they have the money to buy their own boat instead of having to work for somebody else. > As a matter of fact, yes, because occasional rest and relaxation is an important part of sustaining yourself in the marathon that is your working years. If you wreck your work/life balance with no end in sight then you're going to burn out pretty quickly. That's bad for you, not necessarily bad for the economy. Presumably more widgets get made if you work 100 hour weeks and then have a two week breakdown every six months than if you only work 40 hours the whole time. Those conditions would cause you to quit if you had a better option, but that's the point. Give people a better alternative and they can negotiate better working conditions. Some things have human value in excess of their measure in business productivity. > UBI doesn't address any of these issues. They'd all still offer some kind of compensation anyway. If society deems them to be counter-productive, there are other means of countering them - tax policy etc. The point isn't that a UBI solves climate change, it's that some jobs aren't actually better than doing nothing -- and many of them exist primarily so that people can have jobs. The big lobby for coal is the coal miners who don't want to lose their jobs. It would be better if they would all stay home and play video games -- and then we could actually pass that law taxing carbon because they would no longer be worried about losing their jobs. > Food stamps are intended to ensure that people are fed. Housing vouchers are intended to ensure that people have a roof over their heads. If you give people cash instead of food stamps and housing vouchers, people will either have food in their bellies and a roof over their heads, or they won't. If they won't then the moral case for UBI no longer exists (because the moral case for welfare programs will no longer exist). If they will then we're back to the original argument over whether UBI will motivate or demotivate people to work. If it provides the same level of assistance as existing programs that it replaces then it can't reasonably provide less incentive to work than the existing programs. > Most of the gains in automation are due to growth in technology firms, not robots; most of the losses in manufacturing are due to globalization, not robots. There's little evidence showing this to be feasible. In 1790 more than 90% of the labor force consisted of farmers. Today it's less than 3%. The difference is a result of robots and machines and computers and automation. The people who used to be farmers went on to find other jobs, but a lot of the jobs are garbage. We don't need any coal miners whatsoever. We could do with not so many people in advertising. A lot of these jobs either exist solely to give people jobs, or exist only to counteract the same position at a competitor, because if your competitor hires advertisers you have to do the same or lose business. All those people could sit at home and the world would barely even notice -- or would be happier for it. The jobs we really need are the people doing things that are important. But those are also the jobs that will always get done because they're important, so they can justify more compensation than is necessary to attract workers. They also tend to be the jobs it's easiest to get people to do, because people actually like jobs where they know they're making a difference instead of fiddling with the color scheme of cheap plastic garbage that will be in a landfill in six months.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Especially here on HN it's a well-known trope that employers complain that they can't find any engineers when really they can't find any engineers at the price they're willing to pay. And everybody knows they're just saying that to try to import more labor to suppress wages. But then they pay the higher price anyway, which is why engineers are well compensated. > Not to mention that there are ceilings for the price of labor - the money for salaries doesn't come from thin air; it generally comes from higher prices. It can also come from lower corporate margins, but suppose it comes from higher prices. Then some things cost more and there is all the more incentive for people to continue to work because now they need more money to buy the things they want. > If prices can't raise to the level needed to support the necessary salary, the business and product simply won't exist. Only things that wouldn't exist without access to cheap labor, i.e. things with little marginal utility to begin with. > Whether this will result, under UBI, in creative destruction, a death spiral for the economy, or it simply won't be a problem at all since people will keep showing up to work anyway, is quite frankly a matter of faith at this point. It is basically impossible for that to happen from a UBI that only replaces the existing welfare system at the same level of benefits, because it would then provide less disincentive to work than the existing system that conditions benefits on not making money. At that point you can raise the amount gradually and measure the results over time to ensure that you're not doing anything problematic. It's obvious that there is some amount which is "too high" -- it can't be a million dollars a year in current dollars. But it's possible to find the optimal number gradually by experiment without taking any kind of major risk because you're never making a large disruptive change all at once. > Yes, there is something wrong with just being a fisherman. When the fisherman starts a business and grows a fishing fleet, the fisherman creates jobs. If the fisherman just stays a fisherman, those jobs never get created. Except that they do, because the other people also want to be fisherman, but now they all get to be their own boss because they have the money to buy their own boat instead of having to work for somebody else. > As a matter of fact, yes, because occasional rest and relaxation is an important part of sustaining yourself in the marathon that is your working years. If you wreck your work/life balance with no end in sight then you're going to burn out pretty quickly. That's bad for you, not necessarily bad for the economy. Presumably more widgets get made if you work 100 hour weeks and then have a two week breakdown every six months than if you only work 40 hours the whole time. Those conditions would cause you to quit if you had a better option, but that's the point. Give people a better alternative and they can negotiate better working conditions. Some things have human value in excess of their measure in business productivity. > UBI doesn't address any of these issues. They'd all still offer some kind of compensation anyway. If society deems them to be counter-productive, there are other means of countering them - tax policy etc. The point isn't that a UBI solves climate change, it's that some jobs aren't actually better than doing nothing -- and many of them exist primarily so that people can have jobs. The big lobby for coal is the coal miners who don't want to lose their jobs. It would be better if they would all stay home and play video games -- and then we could actually pass that law taxing carbon because they would no longer be worried about losing their jobs. > Food stamps are intended to ensure that people are fed. Housing vouchers are intended to ensure that people have a roof over their heads. If you give people cash instead of food stamps and housing vouchers, people will either have food in their bellies and a roof over their heads, or they won't. If they won't then the moral case for UBI no longer exists (because the moral case for welfare programs will no longer exist). If they will then we're back to the original argument over whether UBI will motivate or demotivate people to work. If it provides the same level of assistance as existing programs that it replaces then it can't reasonably provide less incentive to work than the existing programs. > Most of the gains in automation are due to growth in technology firms, not robots; most of the losses in manufacturing are due to globalization, not robots. There's little evidence showing this to be feasible. In 1790 more than 90% of the labor force consisted of farmers. Today it's less than 3%. The difference is a result of robots and machines and computers and automation. The people who used to be farmers went on to find other jobs, but a lot of the jobs are garbage. We don't need any coal miners whatsoever. We could do with not so many people in advertising. A lot of these jobs either exist solely to give people jobs, or exist only to counteract the same position at a competitor, because if your competitor hires advertisers you have to do the same or lose business. All those people could sit at home and the world would barely even notice -- or would be happier for it. The jobs we really need are the people doing things that are important. But those are also the jobs that will always get done because they're important, so they can justify more compensation than is necessary to attract workers. They also tend to be the jobs it's easiest to get people to do, because people actually like jobs where they know they're making a difference instead of fiddling with the color scheme of cheap plastic garbage that will be in a landfill in six months.