14 ms·

Before I had a programmer job when i was younger, i completely 100% empathize with her in having those types of thankless jobs and constantly being tired. I can

Before I had a programmer job when i was younger, i completely 100% empathize with her in having those types of thankless jobs and constantly being tired. I can't imagine being trapped in that going forward. I bootstrapped my situation but I had a nice parents, a middle-class upbringing and a decent school to start everything, and a knack for programming... but I know/met so many who do not have this leg up in whatever they do in those experiences and have to continue that scraping by. This is why I lean toward UBI. I know both people who really want to succeed but are stuck from so many things or even people that will never try. It is what it is and is only getting worse with automation. I feel sorry for people that have not experienced these things that insist of the work ethic being the answer and are blind to reality.

throwaway07Ju19 7y ago
In the U.S. there is one presidential candidate championing a UBI of $1000/mo. It would be paid for by a VAT tax. Typically VAT tax is unpopular because it is regressive. But the UBI more than compensates for the extra tax burden.
- tj-teej 7y ago
  It is not a UBI as it is not U. The McDonalds cashier is likely getting subsidized housing and food stamp benefits. Yang's plan would require that the cashier has to choose between the "UBI" or her existing benefits. I asked his campaign why they designed it this way and they did not have an answer, I was told to ask the candidate directly, which was disappointing.
  - maxaf 7y ago
    > Yang's plan would require that the cashier has to choose between the "UBI" or her existing benefits. I'm neutral on Yang's campaign, but I like the idea of a UBI because administering it will be much cheaper than running existing benefits. Means-testing has a real and very sizeable cost. What will happen to all the guvment workers who will get laid off once existing benefits have been supplanted by the UBI? They will go home to merrily enjoy their new UBI checks.
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      It’s the government: They’ll just move everyone over to the new Department of UBI, with an Administrator of UBI, a Deputy Administrator of UBI, an Assistant To The Deputy Administrator, a team of consultants, inspectors, auditors, inspectors of the auditors, auditors of the inspectors of the auditors, and so on. Nobody will actually lose their job.
      - maxaf 7y ago
        Your comment is insightful, but left me no instructions as to whether I should be laughing or crying. So, I'll do both.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - dv_dt 7y ago
      I think UBI is definitely interesting, but it can't wholesale replace benefits. For example, a major illness like cancer now can wipe out your income, your savings, and a UBI quite easily. I think UBI might be better than a range of some lower end benefits - but the also exists a variation of needs where we should commit to helping people with, that is going to exceed almost any general UBI threshhold in many cases, and still needs to be covered as benefits.
      - maxaf 7y ago
        Which existing means-tested government benefits are capable of paving over a major illness such as cancer?
        dv_dt 7y ago
        One example might be medicaid - given it's in an incredibly barbaric and stressful way of exhausting your finances first, then trying to get onto the program all while fighting the illness.
    - jimbokun 7y ago
  - cmcd 7y ago
    Yang talks about this on JRE, the idea is that individuals know what they need better than the boards designing "one size fits all" benefits. The Freedom Dividend is meant to help replace complicated benefits for those receiving less than the $1k with a more flexible fund. Cutting back existing benefit programs saves money in bureaucracy and empowers individuals to spend in ways that most benefit them.
    - kingkawn 7y ago
      people are still gonna end up broke and need food, but now there won’t be food stamps specifically set aside for food, or Medicaid funding specifically set aside for healthcare? Terrible choice. People need $1,000 a month on top of what they have, not a check and slashing all their present support.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - matz1 7y ago
    Yang has separate plan to tackle housing price. So essentially the choice is between food stamp or UBI. I would argue UBI is better since it allow you to buy anything you want, no paperwork/approval process required and you wouldn't lose it as you make more money.
  - ska 7y ago
    FWIW, the article says she has no benefits like that.
    - Ottolay 7y ago
      I hate how well off people assume poor people are getting large benefits. Most people under the poverty line do not receive over $1k in means tested benefits. Also, millions of Americans living in poverty receive no benefits at all.[1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them-are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-p...
- sebringj 7y ago
  yah I think we tend to lean toward Yang because well, Elon does and this is a tech forum...yada yada...Yang.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  Yang's implementation is very regressive. You have the regressive VAT tax, but then you also have the fact that you are cutting government benefits then giving everyone $1000. So the poor just end up net poorer. Example: Now: $12,000 a year + $12,000 in benefits = $24,000 $50,000 a year + $0 in benefits = $50,000 UBI: $12,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $24,000 $50,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $62,000 The poorer person receiving benefits is actually poorer then before, relatively. Someone let me know if I'm missing something.
  - hisnameismanuel 7y ago
    Yep - the key thing you're missing is that Yang is going to allow people to choose whether they want to keep their benefits or switch to UBI.
    - Miner49er 7y ago
      How does that change my point though? Either way they end up net poorer. If you're poor and don't take the $1000, you are the same and everyone else is $1000 richer. This makes you effectively $1000 poorer. Yang actually says UBI will save money compared to benefits. So if you pick UBI you're even more than $1000 poorer, if he's right.
      - matz1 7y ago
        >If you're poor and don't take the $1000, you are the same and everyone else is $1000 richer. This makes you effectively $1000 poorer $1000 poorer relative to other person but not actually poorer in terms of my purchasing power.
        jonnycoder 7y ago
        What do you think purchasing power for common goods will do once millions of people are on UBI? My bet is that prices will go up.
        7y ago
- amelius 7y ago
  The US will be the last country to implement UBI.
ambicapter 7y ago
I have the cushy upper middle class programming job and I'm still tired every day. I must be doing something wrong.
- dv_dt 7y ago
  Do you snore, snort, or startle awake at night? Consider if a sleep quality/apnea test might help you. (ugh, this sounds like a commercial...)
  - TOGoS 7y ago
    Nope. Just tired.
  - ambicapter 7y ago
    I do wake up at night but its only since I started closing the window for winter. I have a feeling I have very low tolerance for heat (I like sleeping at <70º F).
nlfwhulsdhouv 7y ago
100% agree that something needs to happen. The way we treat less-fortunate people is shameful and undignified. My biggest concern with UBI specifically is that it will be absorbed by landlords and other societal rent-seekers. My personal opinion is that we should democratize workplaces, through unions in the short-term and co-ops in the long term. McDonalds cashiers should have a say in their working conditions beyond the bare minimum employment regulations (that are so often ignored in retail and food services).
- nerdponx 7y ago
  Keeping people constantly tired and "on the edge" might be a deliberate strategy. Or at least a very convenient coincidence. If they're too tired and too reliant on their current jobs to protest or quit, they'll stay quiet and politically compliant.
  - nlfwhulsdhouv 7y ago
    While I wouldn't be _surprised_ if it's a deliberate strategy, I think it's more likely that the incentives just align in, as you said, a very convenient coincidence for the political elite and bourgeois interests in society.
- leeoniya 7y ago
  > The way we treat less-fortunate people is shameful and undignified. i think the crux has always been separating the unfortunate from the lazy. i don't think anyone would have serious a problem with supporting the former if the latter could be sieved.
  - nlfwhulsdhouv 7y ago
    I honestly don't think this is that important, and I think means-testing or 'laziness'-testing is more effort than it's worth. There will always be lazy people in society, and we have a lot of evidence that lazy people are a burden no matter how hard we try to make their lives. I'm happier giving people enough to get by unconditionally than having them steal or cheat enough to get by. Trapping people in poverty means if they decided to not be lazy at some point, it's incredibly hard for them to get out of their situation and it's much more likely for them to fail. Furthermore, poverty only affects poor lazy people. Rich lazy people (those that got lucky or were born into wealth) can live on dividends their whole lives with no 'punishment'. Lastly, attempts to distinguish lazy people from non-lazy people are easily corrupted by monied interests that don't want to pay as much into society. See the 'welfare queen' narrative that was popular under Reagan.
noir_lord 7y ago
I come from a broken home with one parent neglectful the other with mental illness(my mum is amazing but she had massive issues for over a decade which fortunately have improved), I worked minimum wage jobs for nearly a decade before I got myself out of that trap by something that was a solace and a hobby becoming a career. I whole heartedly support people who organise to ensure a more equitable split for people like them, I got out the trap but for every me there is a dozen who didn’t, never will. I was fortunate to be born in the U.K. and for the last 39 years at least have never had to worry about health insurance care, that’s just the final cherry on the shit sundae isn’t it. She works full time hours but because it’s split over two jobs neither corp provides medical insurance, what an insane inhumane system.
doctorhandshake 7y ago
I think about this a lot. I’m not a web developer but the accessibility of the tools for web development (an RPi, a keyboard/mouse, and wifi), the democratization of learning materials for web development, and the commodification of dev services (even through platforms like Fiverr and Upwork) make me feel like it could be possible to set up people of limited means with all they need to self-teach their way to a better career. I know not everybody has the knack or inclination for development work or even autodidacticism, but for those that take to it, $45 worth of hardware and a few hours of pointing in the right directions could be life-changing. Am I wrong about this? What significant barriers am I missing? I envision an open-source disk image (likely a NOOBS) with learning materials, support resources, and community tools built-in. One could sell pre-loaded SD cards and/or full hardware packages to make it turnkey, or as turnkey as RPi gets, further reducing the barrier to entry. Perhaps even donations and grant money could subsidize hardware. Has something like this been done? Is web dev a good fit? Thoughts?
mschuster91 7y ago
The key problem with UBI, as much as I love the idea, is that any UBI amount will instantly be sucked up by landlords using every trick in the book. What the landlords leave on the table, will be sucked up by rising costs for energy (petrol, electricity, gas) as honestly all three will at least double or triple by efforts to save the climate. In the end the workers will be as fucked as they were before UBI. The problem is modern capitalism itself. Ford-era capitalism where capital owners were proud in paying employees a wage they could live on... that could possibly work for a long time, but many equate even this level with outright "communism".
kabdib 7y ago
I worked as a dishwasher for a year. Every high-tech job I've had since then has been easy in comparison, even the crazy ones.
- missingrib 7y ago
  As someone who's worked in both, I don't entirely agree. Dishwashing was just tiring in a different way. But you could just entirely shut off your mind and zone out. I remember getting into a sort of meditative state while listening to music, it was kind of cool. Tech jobs are just mentally stressful sometimes. I can totally see a good amount of people not wanting to switch places honestly.
technotarek 7y ago
I give a lot of credit to my success to my work ethic, which was nurtured by my parents encouraging me to work at a young age. Paper route by 10, then a soccer referee, then a janitor in a public ice arena. It’s amazing what you learn about hard work from cleaning a hockey locker room. The thing is I didn’t even “need” those jobs. The money was largely spent on a massive CD collection (which I eventually sold to buy an early iPod). Still, those jobs have had a tremendous impact on who I am and give me respect for labor of all kinds.

throwaway07Ju19 7y ago

In the U.S. there is one presidential candidate championing a UBI of $1000/mo. It would be paid for by a VAT tax. Typically VAT tax is unpopular because it is regressive. But the UBI more than compensates for the extra tax burden.

tj-teej 7y ago
It is not a UBI as it is not U. The McDonalds cashier is likely getting subsidized housing and food stamp benefits. Yang's plan would require that the cashier has to choose between the "UBI" or her existing benefits. I asked his campaign why they designed it this way and they did not have an answer, I was told to ask the candidate directly, which was disappointing.
- maxaf 7y ago
  > Yang's plan would require that the cashier has to choose between the "UBI" or her existing benefits. I'm neutral on Yang's campaign, but I like the idea of a UBI because administering it will be much cheaper than running existing benefits. Means-testing has a real and very sizeable cost. What will happen to all the guvment workers who will get laid off once existing benefits have been supplanted by the UBI? They will go home to merrily enjoy their new UBI checks.
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    It’s the government: They’ll just move everyone over to the new Department of UBI, with an Administrator of UBI, a Deputy Administrator of UBI, an Assistant To The Deputy Administrator, a team of consultants, inspectors, auditors, inspectors of the auditors, auditors of the inspectors of the auditors, and so on. Nobody will actually lose their job.
    - maxaf 7y ago
      Your comment is insightful, but left me no instructions as to whether I should be laughing or crying. So, I'll do both.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - dv_dt 7y ago
    I think UBI is definitely interesting, but it can't wholesale replace benefits. For example, a major illness like cancer now can wipe out your income, your savings, and a UBI quite easily. I think UBI might be better than a range of some lower end benefits - but the also exists a variation of needs where we should commit to helping people with, that is going to exceed almost any general UBI threshhold in many cases, and still needs to be covered as benefits.
    - maxaf 7y ago
      Which existing means-tested government benefits are capable of paving over a major illness such as cancer?
      - dv_dt 7y ago
        One example might be medicaid - given it's in an incredibly barbaric and stressful way of exhausting your finances first, then trying to get onto the program all while fighting the illness.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
- cmcd 7y ago
  Yang talks about this on JRE, the idea is that individuals know what they need better than the boards designing "one size fits all" benefits. The Freedom Dividend is meant to help replace complicated benefits for those receiving less than the $1k with a more flexible fund. Cutting back existing benefit programs saves money in bureaucracy and empowers individuals to spend in ways that most benefit them.
  - kingkawn 7y ago
    people are still gonna end up broke and need food, but now there won’t be food stamps specifically set aside for food, or Medicaid funding specifically set aside for healthcare? Terrible choice. People need $1,000 a month on top of what they have, not a check and slashing all their present support.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- matz1 7y ago
  Yang has separate plan to tackle housing price. So essentially the choice is between food stamp or UBI. I would argue UBI is better since it allow you to buy anything you want, no paperwork/approval process required and you wouldn't lose it as you make more money.
- ska 7y ago
  FWIW, the article says she has no benefits like that.
  - Ottolay 7y ago
    I hate how well off people assume poor people are getting large benefits. Most people under the poverty line do not receive over $1k in means tested benefits. Also, millions of Americans living in poverty receive no benefits at all.[1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them-are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-p...
sebringj 7y ago
yah I think we tend to lean toward Yang because well, Elon does and this is a tech forum...yada yada...Yang.
Miner49er 7y ago
Yang's implementation is very regressive. You have the regressive VAT tax, but then you also have the fact that you are cutting government benefits then giving everyone $1000. So the poor just end up net poorer. Example: Now: $12,000 a year + $12,000 in benefits = $24,000 $50,000 a year + $0 in benefits = $50,000 UBI: $12,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $24,000 $50,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $62,000 The poorer person receiving benefits is actually poorer then before, relatively. Someone let me know if I'm missing something.
- hisnameismanuel 7y ago
  Yep - the key thing you're missing is that Yang is going to allow people to choose whether they want to keep their benefits or switch to UBI.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    How does that change my point though? Either way they end up net poorer. If you're poor and don't take the $1000, you are the same and everyone else is $1000 richer. This makes you effectively $1000 poorer. Yang actually says UBI will save money compared to benefits. So if you pick UBI you're even more than $1000 poorer, if he's right.
    - matz1 7y ago
      >If you're poor and don't take the $1000, you are the same and everyone else is $1000 richer. This makes you effectively $1000 poorer $1000 poorer relative to other person but not actually poorer in terms of my purchasing power.
      - jonnycoder 7y ago
        What do you think purchasing power for common goods will do once millions of people are on UBI? My bet is that prices will go up.
        7y ago
amelius 7y ago
The US will be the last country to implement UBI.

ambicapter 7y ago

I have the cushy upper middle class programming job and I'm still tired every day. I must be doing something wrong.

dv_dt 7y ago
Do you snore, snort, or startle awake at night? Consider if a sleep quality/apnea test might help you. (ugh, this sounds like a commercial...)
- TOGoS 7y ago
  Nope. Just tired.
- ambicapter 7y ago
  I do wake up at night but its only since I started closing the window for winter. I have a feeling I have very low tolerance for heat (I like sleeping at <70º F).

nlfwhulsdhouv 7y ago

100% agree that something needs to happen. The way we treat less-fortunate people is shameful and undignified. My biggest concern with UBI specifically is that it will be absorbed by landlords and other societal rent-seekers. My personal opinion is that we should democratize workplaces, through unions in the short-term and co-ops in the long term. McDonalds cashiers should have a say in their working conditions beyond the bare minimum employment regulations (that are so often ignored in retail and food services).

nerdponx 7y ago
Keeping people constantly tired and "on the edge" might be a deliberate strategy. Or at least a very convenient coincidence. If they're too tired and too reliant on their current jobs to protest or quit, they'll stay quiet and politically compliant.
- nlfwhulsdhouv 7y ago
  While I wouldn't be _surprised_ if it's a deliberate strategy, I think it's more likely that the incentives just align in, as you said, a very convenient coincidence for the political elite and bourgeois interests in society.
leeoniya 7y ago
> The way we treat less-fortunate people is shameful and undignified. i think the crux has always been separating the unfortunate from the lazy. i don't think anyone would have serious a problem with supporting the former if the latter could be sieved.
- nlfwhulsdhouv 7y ago
  I honestly don't think this is that important, and I think means-testing or 'laziness'-testing is more effort than it's worth. There will always be lazy people in society, and we have a lot of evidence that lazy people are a burden no matter how hard we try to make their lives. I'm happier giving people enough to get by unconditionally than having them steal or cheat enough to get by. Trapping people in poverty means if they decided to not be lazy at some point, it's incredibly hard for them to get out of their situation and it's much more likely for them to fail. Furthermore, poverty only affects poor lazy people. Rich lazy people (those that got lucky or were born into wealth) can live on dividends their whole lives with no 'punishment'. Lastly, attempts to distinguish lazy people from non-lazy people are easily corrupted by monied interests that don't want to pay as much into society. See the 'welfare queen' narrative that was popular under Reagan.

noir_lord 7y ago

I come from a broken home with one parent neglectful the other with mental illness(my mum is amazing but she had massive issues for over a decade which fortunately have improved), I worked minimum wage jobs for nearly a decade before I got myself out of that trap by something that was a solace and a hobby becoming a career. I whole heartedly support people who organise to ensure a more equitable split for people like them, I got out the trap but for every me there is a dozen who didn’t, never will. I was fortunate to be born in the U.K. and for the last 39 years at least have never had to worry about health insurance care, that’s just the final cherry on the shit sundae isn’t it. She works full time hours but because it’s split over two jobs neither corp provides medical insurance, what an insane inhumane system.

doctorhandshake 7y ago

I think about this a lot. I’m not a web developer but the accessibility of the tools for web development (an RPi, a keyboard/mouse, and wifi), the democratization of learning materials for web development, and the commodification of dev services (even through platforms like Fiverr and Upwork) make me feel like it could be possible to set up people of limited means with all they need to self-teach their way to a better career. I know not everybody has the knack or inclination for development work or even autodidacticism, but for those that take to it, $45 worth of hardware and a few hours of pointing in the right directions could be life-changing. Am I wrong about this? What significant barriers am I missing? I envision an open-source disk image (likely a NOOBS) with learning materials, support resources, and community tools built-in. One could sell pre-loaded SD cards and/or full hardware packages to make it turnkey, or as turnkey as RPi gets, further reducing the barrier to entry. Perhaps even donations and grant money could subsidize hardware. Has something like this been done? Is web dev a good fit? Thoughts?

mschuster91 7y ago

The key problem with UBI, as much as I love the idea, is that any UBI amount will instantly be sucked up by landlords using every trick in the book. What the landlords leave on the table, will be sucked up by rising costs for energy (petrol, electricity, gas) as honestly all three will at least double or triple by efforts to save the climate. In the end the workers will be as fucked as they were before UBI. The problem is modern capitalism itself. Ford-era capitalism where capital owners were proud in paying employees a wage they could live on... that could possibly work for a long time, but many equate even this level with outright "communism".

kabdib 7y ago

I worked as a dishwasher for a year. Every high-tech job I've had since then has been easy in comparison, even the crazy ones.

missingrib 7y ago
As someone who's worked in both, I don't entirely agree. Dishwashing was just tiring in a different way. But you could just entirely shut off your mind and zone out. I remember getting into a sort of meditative state while listening to music, it was kind of cool. Tech jobs are just mentally stressful sometimes. I can totally see a good amount of people not wanting to switch places honestly.

technotarek 7y ago

I give a lot of credit to my success to my work ethic, which was nurtured by my parents encouraging me to work at a young age. Paper route by 10, then a soccer referee, then a janitor in a public ice arena. It’s amazing what you learn about hard work from cleaning a hockey locker room. The thing is I didn’t even “need” those jobs. The money was largely spent on a massive CD collection (which I eventually sold to buy an early iPod). Still, those jobs have had a tremendous impact on who I am and give me respect for labor of all kinds.