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You are correct. People also don't seem to take up fulfilling and meaningful jobs /w low wages even with basic income support. One of the arguments in Finland

by pasiaj 6y ago

You are correct. People also don't seem to take up fulfilling and meaningful jobs /w low wages even with basic income support. One of the arguments in Finland was that basic income would encourage and enable people to take on meaningful & important NGO jobs and community efforts despite their low pay.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Maybe they volunteer? Maybe they turn to hobbies and music? Maybe they have a life? Not everybody measures the success of UBI as "How many folks can we keep slaving away"
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Maybe they volunteer? Maybe they turn to hobbies and music? Maybe they have a life? ... and maybe they want that funded by other people doing the work. Sounds like medieval nobility to me.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Be as cynical as you like. But people's lives are their own. Decades ago we dreamed of the day automation took the yoke of labor from our shoulders. Now that it's approaching, all anybody can think about is "Keep the lower class working! God forbid they have a life!"
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > Be as cynical as you like. But people's lives are their own. Are they though? Who exactly would fund the self-actualization adventures of the lucky recipients, if not other people? I'm guessing here, but I assume the funding wouldn't be voluntary. In that case, those people's lives are not their own, those people's lives (and the results of them spending parts of their lives at work) are shared. > Now that it's approaching, all anybody can think about is "Keep the lower class working! God forbid they have a life!" I live among the lower class. A good part of them do not work and still have a life.
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most of the factories. How is this gonna play out? In the best scenario, we go on to a bright future of little work necessary for everyone. Or, we blame those folks for being 'out of work', let them suffer and die. The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. This is the notion we have to get thru everybody's head.
        Mirioron 6y ago
        >The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. Somebody has to create, build, and maintain those factories. Someone else has to manage the output of those factories and distribute it. Someone else needs to work to secure raw materials for the factory. Age you can't produce everything in factories. You don't have a factory that grows food for example. Programming, especially web development is a great analogy here. You have tools that do almost all the things you would want a website to do. Why do we need web developers at all then? Because it turns out that connecting everything and fine tuning it for your specific needs is quite difficult.
        nitrogen 6y ago
        You don't have a factory that grows food for example. Yet. Modern farms come pretty close, and there are lots of ideas to close the gap.
        JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        The human cost of building those factories, and maintaining them, is 1% of what the hand labor used to be. Yes points to you for noticing there's a supply chain. But that's automating too. The remaining 'developers' in industry are Engineers. They number a tiny fraction of the human labor that factories used to employ. The idea the we can 'retrain' line workers is nonsense. They can't all become Engineers, even if we needed 30M more Engineers which we don't. Grasp at straws, sure some business processes might remain unautomated for some time. But it's not going to matter to most Americans. It'll be small change.
- notkaiho 6y ago
  This is what I meant - some sort of strings-free income is great in encouraging people to pursue passions and things that fulfil them. Turns out those things are not part-time precarious jobs. I'd say that's a finding worth understanding.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Sure you become more secure, you turn to better things not worse. I don't see any surprise there.
pdeuchler 6y ago
Did you even read the article or the study? One of the only conclusive statements from this study was the UBI experiment as enacted here encouraged dependents to take up "fulfilling and meaningful jobs /w low wages" FTA: “Some people said the basic income had zero effect on their productivity, as there were still no jobs in the area they were trained for,” said Prof Helena Blomberg-Kroll, who led the study. “But others said that with the basic income they were prepared to take low-paying jobs they would otherwise have avoided. ... It also encouraged some participants to get more involved in society, by undertaking voluntary work, for example. “Some found the guaranteed income increased the possibility for them to do things like providing informal care for their family or their neighbours,” said one of the researchers, Christian Kroll. “The security of the basic income allowed them to do more meaningful things, as they felt it legitimised this kind of care work. Many of the people who performed such unpaid activities during the two-year period referred to it as work.”

by pasiaj 6y ago

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Maybe they volunteer? Maybe they turn to hobbies and music? Maybe they have a life? Not everybody measures the success of UBI as "How many folks can we keep slaving away"

luckylion 6y ago
> Maybe they volunteer? Maybe they turn to hobbies and music? Maybe they have a life? ... and maybe they want that funded by other people doing the work. Sounds like medieval nobility to me.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Be as cynical as you like. But people's lives are their own. Decades ago we dreamed of the day automation took the yoke of labor from our shoulders. Now that it's approaching, all anybody can think about is "Keep the lower class working! God forbid they have a life!"
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Be as cynical as you like. But people's lives are their own. Are they though? Who exactly would fund the self-actualization adventures of the lucky recipients, if not other people? I'm guessing here, but I assume the funding wouldn't be voluntary. In that case, those people's lives are not their own, those people's lives (and the results of them spending parts of their lives at work) are shared. > Now that it's approaching, all anybody can think about is "Keep the lower class working! God forbid they have a life!" I live among the lower class. A good part of them do not work and still have a life.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most of the factories. How is this gonna play out? In the best scenario, we go on to a bright future of little work necessary for everyone. Or, we blame those folks for being 'out of work', let them suffer and die. The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. This is the notion we have to get thru everybody's head.
      - Mirioron 6y ago
        >The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. Somebody has to create, build, and maintain those factories. Someone else has to manage the output of those factories and distribute it. Someone else needs to work to secure raw materials for the factory. Age you can't produce everything in factories. You don't have a factory that grows food for example. Programming, especially web development is a great analogy here. You have tools that do almost all the things you would want a website to do. Why do we need web developers at all then? Because it turns out that connecting everything and fine tuning it for your specific needs is quite difficult.
        nitrogen 6y ago
        You don't have a factory that grows food for example. Yet. Modern farms come pretty close, and there are lots of ideas to close the gap.
        JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        The human cost of building those factories, and maintaining them, is 1% of what the hand labor used to be. Yes points to you for noticing there's a supply chain. But that's automating too. The remaining 'developers' in industry are Engineers. They number a tiny fraction of the human labor that factories used to employ. The idea the we can 'retrain' line workers is nonsense. They can't all become Engineers, even if we needed 30M more Engineers which we don't. Grasp at straws, sure some business processes might remain unautomated for some time. But it's not going to matter to most Americans. It'll be small change.
notkaiho 6y ago
This is what I meant - some sort of strings-free income is great in encouraging people to pursue passions and things that fulfil them. Turns out those things are not part-time precarious jobs. I'd say that's a finding worth understanding.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Sure you become more secure, you turn to better things not worse. I don't see any surprise there.

pdeuchler 6y ago

Did you even read the article or the study? One of the only conclusive statements from this study was the UBI experiment as enacted here encouraged dependents to take up "fulfilling and meaningful jobs /w low wages" FTA: “Some people said the basic income had zero effect on their productivity, as there were still no jobs in the area they were trained for,” said Prof Helena Blomberg-Kroll, who led the study. “But others said that with the basic income they were prepared to take low-paying jobs they would otherwise have avoided. ... It also encouraged some participants to get more involved in society, by undertaking voluntary work, for example. “Some found the guaranteed income increased the possibility for them to do things like providing informal care for their family or their neighbours,” said one of the researchers, Christian Kroll. “The security of the basic income allowed them to do more meaningful things, as they felt it legitimised this kind of care work. Many of the people who performed such unpaid activities during the two-year period referred to it as work.”