5 ms·

People don't get pissed when income from a shared resource (petroleum for instance) is divided among people living on the land or in the country. People get pis

by grok2 7y ago

People don't get pissed when income from a shared resource (petroleum for instance) is divided among people living on the land or in the country. People get pissed when the taxes they pay (for improving infrastructure and governance) is directed towards subsidizing the living of others (even though in the long run, it might be in many ways beneficial as a society). In many ways it is natural for them to be unhappy about this. I think, there needs to be more education on the benefits (as a social net, they themselves may be the beneficiaries) that alleviates people's fears on such UBI plans and shows the overall societal benefits. Also more longer-term experiments to confirm if it really helps. If society makes progress and does move to a model where machines are doing most of the work, and there is more free time for people and most people don't need to do any work for their living or will not be able to find work for their living, we will definitely need to look at this model or any other alternate model that may come about as a result of natural experiences with such progress.

zozbot234 7y ago
This study has nothing to do with taxes, though. It's talking about unconditional handouts managed by GiveDirectly (a charity, and widely considered a highly efficient one), targeting households in extreme poverty. Much of this could be expected, BTW; since the grants were fairly large, the GDP-boosting effect was probably due to recipients acquiring some sorts of physical assets and kickstarting broader economic growth. These dynamics would only apply to a very limited extent in high-income countries where automation is a concern - even though UBI is quite likely to be a good idea for a variety of other reasons.
- iguy 7y ago
  > This study has nothing to do with taxes, though. It's talking about unconditional handouts Sure, but it's being read as a pilot study for such things "at home", where it would most certainly have to be funded by taxes. Or at least this reading is GP's explanation for why people get angry. When people are only discussing how best to spend 3rd world development aid, then nobody gets all that angry.
  - grok2 7y ago
    Yeah, I was responding to why this generates anger. It's not directly about taxes, but about how the people who generate the taxes spend large portions of their day "working" to produce the income that gets taxed while the social net helps people who aren't"working" -- yeah the issue is more complex than that, but I think the anger is due to thinking of this simplistically in a cause-and-effect manner. UBI appears to be a form of social net which might encourage people to not work.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      > UBI appears to be a form of social net which might encourage people to not work. UBI is actually the only form of social net that tries its best to limit this. (And it's not an easy problem to solve - a redistribution arrangement like UBI inherently involves some sort of "means testing" and must be phased out as one reaches the breakeven point where one starts "paying into" the system. People who tell you that this isn't a thing and that UBI "gives money to everyone, or to the rich" are totally clueless. They fail to understand the basics about balancing a budget, never mind actual, non-trivial economics.)
      - CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
        Depends on where you put the emphasis. Most UBI discussion (amongst proponents) start from the assumption that it has to be a certain size with various disagreements of the proper sized vs budget concerns. I think that is the wrong focus. If we instead start with deciding “just” financing options, an make a public dividend it would be a good start. One study concluded that an unconditional payout as low as $50/month can help some people tremendously (IIRC this was in Sweden) “Just” financing to me is to recognize that some resources are truly part of the commons, and any expropriation should generate rent for everyone. Land being the typical example, but also things like fishing rights, carbon emission rights, or why not ipv4 networks and dns-domians.
        marcusverus 7y ago
        I'm not comfortable implementing any form of UBI. In my estimation, UBI will create an easy, explicit mechanism for vote-buying, which will be too much for politicians and voters to resist and would drive the benefit ever upwards. If everyone gets $50 UBI bucks in the mail every month, and candidate A runs on the platform of raising it to $100 per month, they will guarantee themselves the support of some significant self-interested portion of society for whom this would be a net benefit. Other candidates would be pressured to make similar offers to compete. We already see this kind of thing (farm subsidies, student loan forgiveness, etc), UBI would be more explicit/immediate, and expand the affected block to include every eligible voter. Just how hesitant politicians are to make the needed reforms to social security, even though we all know that it needs to happen in some form. UBI would be worse.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
We're already at a point where machines do most of the work. There are so many homeless Americans because our government has failed to manage the resources of our country to provide even a basic poverty level standard of living for everyone. There are countless reasons and studies about how or why this occurred but I think the reality is rather simple. People in power exploit those they control to get more wealth and power. Whether it's the manager at mcdonalds or bezos himself, if they can abuse their power they will. The reason there is so much anger against handouts to the destitute is because this reduces the power these oligarchs hold. Unless you're topping Forbes richest list then you're a peon in their game and they're not going to capitulate to the life of a pleb without a fight that'd make Hitler look like Rosa parks.
- rayiner 7y ago
  > We're already at a point where machines do most of the work. This premise is false on its face, given how aggressively western countries are trying to encourage working age immigration. The entire developed world is facing shortages of construction workers, nurses, daycare workers, doctors, engineers, etc. Jobs aren’t being automated away for you look at the labor force participation rate: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip... From 1998 to 2028, there will have been a sharp drop in the 16-24 age group. But there will have been only a few points drop among 24-55, and sharp increases among 55+ (which mostly happened from 1998 to 2008).
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
    You're completely missing the point. Either willfully, or you're just so blissfully unaware of the marvels of modern technology. You're missing things like automated knitting and sewing. A garmet that would take 25-100 hours by hand can by made by a machine in minutes and sewn into shape in just moments more. Have you ever done a needlecraft? I have. Besides the yarn for a sweater costing over $100 itself, I'd have to ask $3,000 for the labor alone. Brick roads used to take weeks just for a few blocks with an equivalently sized crew, and several orders of magnitude greater effort. Now far more length can be torn up recycled and paved over again in days with relatively minimal effort. We used to have manned switchboard operators. Do the math on how many we would need to accommodate the internet at current scale without routers and switches then get back to me. You just don't see now many thousands of billions of hours of hard, boring labor is done by machines every day, and mostly perfectly. It's truly marvelous. The fact that people are still homeless is a crime against humanity that rests squarely on the world leaders who allowed so a tragedy to occur. In a truly civilized society these leaders would imprisoned. Want to really know how dann good you have it? Spend 10 years in the northern reaches of canada. I doubt You could survive the summer months. You can only bring the clothes on your back. No tools, supplies, books, or resources. If you want to take my bet drop me an email. I'm sure we can come to a fair wager.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
> "In many ways it is natural for them to be unhappy about this..." Is it? Anyone with a reasonable understanding of the process of life knows how fragile a given (personal) status quo really is. Factor in the indirect costs to everyone for any single "failure" and only naivete can explain your assumption. Note: I'm not saying your naive. I speaking of those who would fall under your the umbrella of your observation.
- grok2 7y ago
  Isn't it? Atleast thinking of it from the perspective of someone who spends a large part of their day "working" in jobs that might not be something they really like to do. As a society, I think people are already conditioned to help out their "family" by their labors, but the education I was talking about should be geared towards thinking of every one has part of an extended "family" where some parts of the family need to be subsidized and that it is natural to do so :-).
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    The use of the world "natural" was/is the key issue here. That's misleading, at best. Naturally, in the Darwinian sense of natural, we as a species survived because there was a we/us. In that context (of history) "narural" is completely unnatural. From Darwin to Orwell, see? :) The myth of the individual is a "modern" invention that has little if any historic support. To normalize that myth (read: false assumption) with the word natural is silly at best. Of course, those most susceptible to that ruse are typically the least likely to realize and/or admit they've been duped. Of course they want to believe everyone else was duped as well. I hope this helps.
perl4ever 7y ago
"People don't get pissed when income from a shared resource (petroleum for instance) is divided among people living on the land or in the country" I think that statement is worth considering a bit more. For instance, Alaska and Saudi Arabia fit that description, setting aside whatever "on the land" means. I don't know if people "get pissed" about it, but it has been noticed that such a situation oftentimes doesn't seem to result in a healthy economy/society. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
- kijin 7y ago
  The resource curse mostly affects poor African countries with terrible governance. The revenue from the valuable resource usually goes straight into the pockets of whoever holds the most power, triggering a fierce competition for who can get away with the most corruption. I don't think any of these countries have tried the Alaskan model of just paying everyone an equal dividend, so that's a huge confounding variable.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Well, you're just asserting the causal relationship goes the other way. And..just because Alaska isn't that bad doesn't mean it couldn't support the hypothesis. It's not California. Of course, California has a lot of resources too, so one could also say it's not New Jersey, or New York. I suppose that Alaska does make a case that giving away a "citizens dividend" can be done without attracting the world to move there and making it unmanageable.

by grok2 7y ago

zozbot234 7y ago

This study has nothing to do with taxes, though. It's talking about unconditional handouts managed by GiveDirectly (a charity, and widely considered a highly efficient one), targeting households in extreme poverty. Much of this could be expected, BTW; since the grants were fairly large, the GDP-boosting effect was probably due to recipients acquiring some sorts of physical assets and kickstarting broader economic growth. These dynamics would only apply to a very limited extent in high-income countries where automation is a concern - even though UBI is quite likely to be a good idea for a variety of other reasons.

iguy 7y ago
> This study has nothing to do with taxes, though. It's talking about unconditional handouts Sure, but it's being read as a pilot study for such things "at home", where it would most certainly have to be funded by taxes. Or at least this reading is GP's explanation for why people get angry. When people are only discussing how best to spend 3rd world development aid, then nobody gets all that angry.
- grok2 7y ago
  Yeah, I was responding to why this generates anger. It's not directly about taxes, but about how the people who generate the taxes spend large portions of their day "working" to produce the income that gets taxed while the social net helps people who aren't"working" -- yeah the issue is more complex than that, but I think the anger is due to thinking of this simplistically in a cause-and-effect manner. UBI appears to be a form of social net which might encourage people to not work.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    > UBI appears to be a form of social net which might encourage people to not work. UBI is actually the only form of social net that tries its best to limit this. (And it's not an easy problem to solve - a redistribution arrangement like UBI inherently involves some sort of "means testing" and must be phased out as one reaches the breakeven point where one starts "paying into" the system. People who tell you that this isn't a thing and that UBI "gives money to everyone, or to the rich" are totally clueless. They fail to understand the basics about balancing a budget, never mind actual, non-trivial economics.)
    - CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
      Depends on where you put the emphasis. Most UBI discussion (amongst proponents) start from the assumption that it has to be a certain size with various disagreements of the proper sized vs budget concerns. I think that is the wrong focus. If we instead start with deciding “just” financing options, an make a public dividend it would be a good start. One study concluded that an unconditional payout as low as $50/month can help some people tremendously (IIRC this was in Sweden) “Just” financing to me is to recognize that some resources are truly part of the commons, and any expropriation should generate rent for everyone. Land being the typical example, but also things like fishing rights, carbon emission rights, or why not ipv4 networks and dns-domians.
      - marcusverus 7y ago
        I'm not comfortable implementing any form of UBI. In my estimation, UBI will create an easy, explicit mechanism for vote-buying, which will be too much for politicians and voters to resist and would drive the benefit ever upwards. If everyone gets $50 UBI bucks in the mail every month, and candidate A runs on the platform of raising it to $100 per month, they will guarantee themselves the support of some significant self-interested portion of society for whom this would be a net benefit. Other candidates would be pressured to make similar offers to compete. We already see this kind of thing (farm subsidies, student loan forgiveness, etc), UBI would be more explicit/immediate, and expand the affected block to include every eligible voter. Just how hesitant politicians are to make the needed reforms to social security, even though we all know that it needs to happen in some form. UBI would be worse.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago

We're already at a point where machines do most of the work. There are so many homeless Americans because our government has failed to manage the resources of our country to provide even a basic poverty level standard of living for everyone. There are countless reasons and studies about how or why this occurred but I think the reality is rather simple. People in power exploit those they control to get more wealth and power. Whether it's the manager at mcdonalds or bezos himself, if they can abuse their power they will. The reason there is so much anger against handouts to the destitute is because this reduces the power these oligarchs hold. Unless you're topping Forbes richest list then you're a peon in their game and they're not going to capitulate to the life of a pleb without a fight that'd make Hitler look like Rosa parks.

rayiner 7y ago
> We're already at a point where machines do most of the work. This premise is false on its face, given how aggressively western countries are trying to encourage working age immigration. The entire developed world is facing shortages of construction workers, nurses, daycare workers, doctors, engineers, etc. Jobs aren’t being automated away for you look at the labor force participation rate: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip... From 1998 to 2028, there will have been a sharp drop in the 16-24 age group. But there will have been only a few points drop among 24-55, and sharp increases among 55+ (which mostly happened from 1998 to 2008).
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
  You're completely missing the point. Either willfully, or you're just so blissfully unaware of the marvels of modern technology. You're missing things like automated knitting and sewing. A garmet that would take 25-100 hours by hand can by made by a machine in minutes and sewn into shape in just moments more. Have you ever done a needlecraft? I have. Besides the yarn for a sweater costing over $100 itself, I'd have to ask $3,000 for the labor alone. Brick roads used to take weeks just for a few blocks with an equivalently sized crew, and several orders of magnitude greater effort. Now far more length can be torn up recycled and paved over again in days with relatively minimal effort. We used to have manned switchboard operators. Do the math on how many we would need to accommodate the internet at current scale without routers and switches then get back to me. You just don't see now many thousands of billions of hours of hard, boring labor is done by machines every day, and mostly perfectly. It's truly marvelous. The fact that people are still homeless is a crime against humanity that rests squarely on the world leaders who allowed so a tragedy to occur. In a truly civilized society these leaders would imprisoned. Want to really know how dann good you have it? Spend 10 years in the northern reaches of canada. I doubt You could survive the summer months. You can only bring the clothes on your back. No tools, supplies, books, or resources. If you want to take my bet drop me an email. I'm sure we can come to a fair wager.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

> "In many ways it is natural for them to be unhappy about this..." Is it? Anyone with a reasonable understanding of the process of life knows how fragile a given (personal) status quo really is. Factor in the indirect costs to everyone for any single "failure" and only naivete can explain your assumption. Note: I'm not saying your naive. I speaking of those who would fall under your the umbrella of your observation.

grok2 7y ago
Isn't it? Atleast thinking of it from the perspective of someone who spends a large part of their day "working" in jobs that might not be something they really like to do. As a society, I think people are already conditioned to help out their "family" by their labors, but the education I was talking about should be geared towards thinking of every one has part of an extended "family" where some parts of the family need to be subsidized and that it is natural to do so :-).
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  The use of the world "natural" was/is the key issue here. That's misleading, at best. Naturally, in the Darwinian sense of natural, we as a species survived because there was a we/us. In that context (of history) "narural" is completely unnatural. From Darwin to Orwell, see? :) The myth of the individual is a "modern" invention that has little if any historic support. To normalize that myth (read: false assumption) with the word natural is silly at best. Of course, those most susceptible to that ruse are typically the least likely to realize and/or admit they've been duped. Of course they want to believe everyone else was duped as well. I hope this helps.

perl4ever 7y ago

"People don't get pissed when income from a shared resource (petroleum for instance) is divided among people living on the land or in the country" I think that statement is worth considering a bit more. For instance, Alaska and Saudi Arabia fit that description, setting aside whatever "on the land" means. I don't know if people "get pissed" about it, but it has been noticed that such a situation oftentimes doesn't seem to result in a healthy economy/society. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

kijin 7y ago
The resource curse mostly affects poor African countries with terrible governance. The revenue from the valuable resource usually goes straight into the pockets of whoever holds the most power, triggering a fierce competition for who can get away with the most corruption. I don't think any of these countries have tried the Alaskan model of just paying everyone an equal dividend, so that's a huge confounding variable.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Well, you're just asserting the causal relationship goes the other way. And..just because Alaska isn't that bad doesn't mean it couldn't support the hypothesis. It's not California. Of course, California has a lot of resources too, so one could also say it's not New Jersey, or New York. I suppose that Alaska does make a case that giving away a "citizens dividend" can be done without attracting the world to move there and making it unmanageable.