12 ms·

You hit the nail on the head, UBI would decrease how much people are locked into undesirable jobs. However, this is a feature, not a failure of the system. Curr

by ntSean 6y ago

You hit the nail on the head, UBI would decrease how much people are locked into undesirable jobs. However, this is a feature, not a failure of the system. Currently, we have under-utilised talent with low economic mobility who have bills to pay. There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created.

luckylion 6y ago
> There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created. Why would they want to fill gaps when the rent is paid, the fridge is stocked, and there are so many games to play and movies to watch? I can totally see the "gaps" in fun jobs being filled. But the "gaps" in garbage collection, sewer inspection and other dirty jobs? Let's not kid ourselves and pretend that "if only people wouldn't have to worry about rent, they'd gladly take these jobs".
- ntSean 6y ago
  Is media the only thing worth consuming? We can participate in the economy by travelling, buying gadgets, cars, experiencing good food, etc. I do not believe that ones existence is fulfilled because they haven't finished their Netflix library. If someone wants money to engage with society in a more meaningful way, there are always jobs to allow them to do so- even if they're dirty.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Yeah, Netflix was just an example. You can replace it with "enjoying nature's beauty", "listening to music" or "thinking about the true nature of existence", it doesn't really matter for the point I was trying to make. You can participate by spending money you were gifted, but you're not contributing. If it was just about participation, let's remove all the clutter, just give everyone a million bucks a month - we can all participate in the economy by spending roughly $30k a day and it'll be an economic wonder. The question is: who will be there to sell us things, to cook food at the fancy restaurant etc, if they also get $30k a day? You'll have to pay them a lot more than today. And that'll just mean that your $30k are worth proportionally less. Money is just a placeholder for value. You need the value being produced to make the money meaningful.
    - regularfry 6y ago
      This is where we run into a philosophical divide. Does a human life have intrinsic worth? That's what we're talking about here. Even without tangling with that question, there's the argument that moving money around is itself a contribution. It's a marginal one, and if that's all you're doing, that means your total contribution is marginal. But that's fine, there's always going to be a spectrum of contributions between those that are paper-thin and the earth-shattering works of great import. Some jobs that look like hard work are a net negative on society. If you get into the game of saying "contributions below this specific level don't count", you end up splitting hairs and, because everyone's values work differently, you can't avoid bringing moral arguments into the frame. Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day. That's qualitatively different, not least because it's so far from the basic cost of living that it just doesn't make sense as a comparison. It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        > This is where we run into a philosophical divide. Does a human life have intrinsic worth? That's what we're talking about here. The more important question is: if so, do all human lives have that worth? That is: to satisfy A's personal hobbies, are we allowed to make B work more than B would personally like? If moving money around is a contribution, let's automate it. We have computers, we can do it at a very high frequency. Even if it's a marginal contribution, we can do it many times per second. If it's indeed a contribution, that should help, shouldn't it? If we need more contribution, we'll just add another node or increase bandwidth, and voila, we'll have even more, which we can use to add even more. Magic! > Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day. Right. It will still have the same effect if everyone gets it: to convince them to continue working, you'll have to increase the wages. > It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it. That's just another way to say "work is optional, you don't have to contribute anything if you don't want to, but the others have to share with you". You can make that argument, but it's a very different one from the idea of UBI, which somehow magically creates wealth by moving money around and reducing the incentive to contribute to society.
- PudgePacket 6y ago
  UBI is not luxury though. You'd still be incentived to do these jobs because they pay. Contrary to popular belief fear of death by being poor is not the only thing that motivates people.
  - donw 6y ago
    > Contrary to popular belief fear of death by being poor is not the only thing that motivates people. That's not very charitable. I rather doubt that anybody here considers "Dickensian Nightmare" as a desirable world-state. Maybe the best way to showcase the concern is to talk about some relatives of mine, who work just enough to pursue their two great life passions: (a) smoking weed; and (b) playing video games. Now, either of these things is fine! Both of them together are fine are fine! And should you have the means, I have no problem if this is the sum total of your existence. But I have zero interest in funding those life-choices via taxes. With no-strings-attached UBI, that's exactly what we are talking about. Moreover, there is a massive danger in decoupling "value contributed to the tribe" (work) from "value received from the tribe" (income). What I think would make sense is to require that people receiving UBI still need to do some kind of work. It can be painting, or cleaning parks, or making horrible music, or greeting people at Wal-Mart, but you are required to spend at least four full-time days per week (32 hours) contributing to society. I am unsure how to appropriately enforce this. On the one hand, you want to prevent bad actors; on the other hand, it would be stupid for the cost of enforcement to significantly exceed the cost of those bad actors -- like when the state of Florida blew through an extra $2 million to save $80k of welfare fraud.
    - regularfry 6y ago
      I strongly suspect this is one of those situations where the costs of enforcement would dwarf the benefits. For the number of people involved, it's literally not worth bothering.
      - donw 6y ago
        Maybe? If we're talking about national-level UBI, that's a lot of people involved, and a lot of money for the taking by those who are high in enterprise but rather deficient in moral fiber. There are likely a lot of options on the enforcement front, and that smart enforcement with appropriate penalties would keep bad behavior to a minimum. The goal of enforcement is not to stop every bad actor -- just to make the risk and hassle high enough to deter a significant portion of them. Consider how Taiwan cheaply enforces sales tax: when you get a receipt for anything, it has a lottery code on it. Winners turn their receipts in for prizes, and the government then goes and checks those specific transactions for tax compliance. Penalties for tax violations are severe, and compliance is high, at minimal cost to the state. Truly random checks (low probability of being caught) with severe penalties (massive pain if you are caught), and maybe even a reward for compliance, seems to be the way to go in this case.
- friendlybus 6y ago
  Garbage collectors I've met are happy people and they get paid well for the job.
- triceratops 6y ago
  Wages for these jobs would rise until they were filled. Or they'd be cheaper to automate away. I'm all for people doing dirty jobs to be paid more. They're doing essential, undesirable work.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    As was mentioned at the start of this thread, there would be the danger that UBI is inflated away to meaninglessness if all current minimum wage jobs started paying sufficiently more to attract people. How could we prevent that without ubiquitous automation being available yet?
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > there would be the danger that UBI is inflated away to meaninglessness If that's true, doesn't it also mean UBI won't cost anything? (I realize that's some pretty twisted logic) Either the amount paid by UBI is meaningful, which means it'll make a difference to people's lives. Or it's so small as to be meaningless. Which means it won't cost that much per-capita to implement. (It's late, I haven't thought this through, feel free to downvote if this is completely bonkers :-P)
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Wages for these jobs would rise until they were filled. Which would in turn make garbage collection more expensive. Now everyone has to pay more for it, including UBI recipients. Now UBI won't be enough to live, thus UBI has to be raised, making garbage collection at the then current rate less interesting. Back to square one, repeat.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > Now everyone has to pay more for it, including UBI recipients. Now UBI won't be enough to live The second sentence doesn't necessarily follow from the first one. 1. It's hard to tell how much costs would actually rise by. 2. UBI doesn't have to be enough to live on by itself. It just has to be universal and unconditional.
- taneq 6y ago
  Because "stopping wanting more things once they have the basics" is totally a common human thing that humans do.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    How many people will work a second job to make extra money when they can live comfortably off their main job? The relative value of "more" sinks once you have enough.
    - taneq 6y ago
      UBI isn't going to be a fat allowance to fund a comfortable life of leisure. It's going to cover subsistence level costs only. Many, many people work second jobs in order to be more comfortable. I don't think it's far-fetched to expect that most people would work a first job.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        That likely depends on the individual proponent of UBI. From what I hear in Germany, it's supposed to be higher than our current from of welfare, which puts it somewhere at ~1000 Euros a months at minimum, so you can cover an average sized apartment, subsidized health insurance, utilities etc. I know people who live -in their eyes- comfortably off of that. They see no reason to change anything, as enough is provided to eat, sleep, smoke, get drunk, have a TV and an xbox, a computer and internet and use public transportation to meet with friends. Sure, you can't easily travel, and you're not going to buy a house any time soon (but if you own one already, you can keep it; if you're still paying the mortgage, the state will cover it for you within reasonable limits), but it's a comfortable life if you don't have a lot of ambition or can make some money on the side.
    - treis 6y ago
      Lots of people do that. Or more commonly they pick up extra shifts/OT at their main job. People will still work if they have their essentials covered to buy a new car/go on vacation/ etc.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created. Except that isn't what actually happens. Even without basic income and in the depths of the recession, certain categories of jobs (especially in agriculture) could not be filled. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/West_Paradox-of-Worker-Shortages.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/West_Pa...
- maxwindiff 6y ago
  Then those jobs won't be filled whether there is UBI or not anyway.
  - deegles 6y ago
    I.E. Millions of people won't have to do backbreaking labor for pennies, that sounds good to me. Maybe the jobs shouldn't exist.
- ragebol 6y ago
  Then there are 2 options: automate agricultural jobs (in progress) or make the work more desirable (raise the wages and/or make it less straining)
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    John Deere alone has 100 million acres under automated tillage, worldwide.
- konschubert 6y ago
  Then maybe these jobs should pay better. Isn’t that how capitalism works? Conversely, if the salaries aren’t going up then there probably isn’t actually a real labour shortage. “My startup went out of business because i couldn’t find devs to work for 20K” is a statement that would rightfully get laughed at in here. When a farmer says the same thing people should equally call bullshit.
  - 6y ago
drobert 6y ago
>Currently, we have under-utilised talent with low economic mobility who have bills to pay. Where is the proof of that? Unless the system is highly unmeritocratic this does not happen. Say you work at McDonald's and you're a brilliant person. You will soon be promoted and get more options. In those 8 eight hours you spend at work if you give your best you will be noticed.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Here’s one data point for you: There’s a fantastic writer out there that goes by the penname “A Man In Black”. He’s unable to write because he’s stuck in a medium wage job that doesn’t provide medical benefits - completely unrelated to writing - and has to spend his money to keep himself and his mother alive and in housing. As a result, he’s unable to even write in his limited spare time. That, to me, is the definition of under-utlised talent with low economic mobility. The system is, as you say, highly unmeritocratic. It has no incentive to be meritocratic for a vast majority of the population. Even your theoretical brilliant McDonalds employee would find a ceiling at the management level a raise of a mere handful of dollars over the line cooks.
  - lopmotr 6y ago
    Why doesn't he use his writing to support himself? Is it really because he won't get paid until the future but he needs the money now, or is it that writing won't ever earn enough to support himself and his mother? If the latter, then it's not an under-utilized talent, it's a talent that's not worth his time to practice. Many people are good at painting or singing or other things that are fun for themselves but of very little value to others - less value than working in McDonalds. If they spent their time doing what they're good at, they'd actually be wasting their burger-flipping talents.
    - godtoldmetodoit 6y ago
      "If the market doesn't value it, it has no value" This is a sick way of thinking about the world. A parent doesn't get paid for the work they do raising their child. Better flip burgers. The lady who wants to teach under privileged youth art. Has no market value, better to flip burgers. The next JK Rowling wants to write, but her writing produces no immediate market value. Best to just flip burgers. The man who wants to help the homeless. Darn, next to no market value, better flip burgers. I'm sick of forcing everyone to live as a slave to the market. The market is not perfect. The market does not solve every human problem. The market cannot accomplish everything we want to do as a species. The market is a tool, let's treat it as one and stop worshiping it.

by ntSean 6y ago

luckylion 6y ago

> There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created. Why would they want to fill gaps when the rent is paid, the fridge is stocked, and there are so many games to play and movies to watch? I can totally see the "gaps" in fun jobs being filled. But the "gaps" in garbage collection, sewer inspection and other dirty jobs? Let's not kid ourselves and pretend that "if only people wouldn't have to worry about rent, they'd gladly take these jobs".

ntSean 6y ago
Is media the only thing worth consuming? We can participate in the economy by travelling, buying gadgets, cars, experiencing good food, etc. I do not believe that ones existence is fulfilled because they haven't finished their Netflix library. If someone wants money to engage with society in a more meaningful way, there are always jobs to allow them to do so- even if they're dirty.
- luckylion 6y ago
  Yeah, Netflix was just an example. You can replace it with "enjoying nature's beauty", "listening to music" or "thinking about the true nature of existence", it doesn't really matter for the point I was trying to make. You can participate by spending money you were gifted, but you're not contributing. If it was just about participation, let's remove all the clutter, just give everyone a million bucks a month - we can all participate in the economy by spending roughly $30k a day and it'll be an economic wonder. The question is: who will be there to sell us things, to cook food at the fancy restaurant etc, if they also get $30k a day? You'll have to pay them a lot more than today. And that'll just mean that your $30k are worth proportionally less. Money is just a placeholder for value. You need the value being produced to make the money meaningful.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    This is where we run into a philosophical divide. Does a human life have intrinsic worth? That's what we're talking about here. Even without tangling with that question, there's the argument that moving money around is itself a contribution. It's a marginal one, and if that's all you're doing, that means your total contribution is marginal. But that's fine, there's always going to be a spectrum of contributions between those that are paper-thin and the earth-shattering works of great import. Some jobs that look like hard work are a net negative on society. If you get into the game of saying "contributions below this specific level don't count", you end up splitting hairs and, because everyone's values work differently, you can't avoid bringing moral arguments into the frame. Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day. That's qualitatively different, not least because it's so far from the basic cost of living that it just doesn't make sense as a comparison. It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > This is where we run into a philosophical divide. Does a human life have intrinsic worth? That's what we're talking about here. The more important question is: if so, do all human lives have that worth? That is: to satisfy A's personal hobbies, are we allowed to make B work more than B would personally like? If moving money around is a contribution, let's automate it. We have computers, we can do it at a very high frequency. Even if it's a marginal contribution, we can do it many times per second. If it's indeed a contribution, that should help, shouldn't it? If we need more contribution, we'll just add another node or increase bandwidth, and voila, we'll have even more, which we can use to add even more. Magic! > Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day. Right. It will still have the same effect if everyone gets it: to convince them to continue working, you'll have to increase the wages. > It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it. That's just another way to say "work is optional, you don't have to contribute anything if you don't want to, but the others have to share with you". You can make that argument, but it's a very different one from the idea of UBI, which somehow magically creates wealth by moving money around and reducing the incentive to contribute to society.
PudgePacket 6y ago
UBI is not luxury though. You'd still be incentived to do these jobs because they pay. Contrary to popular belief fear of death by being poor is not the only thing that motivates people.
- donw 6y ago
  > Contrary to popular belief fear of death by being poor is not the only thing that motivates people. That's not very charitable. I rather doubt that anybody here considers "Dickensian Nightmare" as a desirable world-state. Maybe the best way to showcase the concern is to talk about some relatives of mine, who work just enough to pursue their two great life passions: (a) smoking weed; and (b) playing video games. Now, either of these things is fine! Both of them together are fine are fine! And should you have the means, I have no problem if this is the sum total of your existence. But I have zero interest in funding those life-choices via taxes. With no-strings-attached UBI, that's exactly what we are talking about. Moreover, there is a massive danger in decoupling "value contributed to the tribe" (work) from "value received from the tribe" (income). What I think would make sense is to require that people receiving UBI still need to do some kind of work. It can be painting, or cleaning parks, or making horrible music, or greeting people at Wal-Mart, but you are required to spend at least four full-time days per week (32 hours) contributing to society. I am unsure how to appropriately enforce this. On the one hand, you want to prevent bad actors; on the other hand, it would be stupid for the cost of enforcement to significantly exceed the cost of those bad actors -- like when the state of Florida blew through an extra $2 million to save $80k of welfare fraud.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    I strongly suspect this is one of those situations where the costs of enforcement would dwarf the benefits. For the number of people involved, it's literally not worth bothering.
    - donw 6y ago
      Maybe? If we're talking about national-level UBI, that's a lot of people involved, and a lot of money for the taking by those who are high in enterprise but rather deficient in moral fiber. There are likely a lot of options on the enforcement front, and that smart enforcement with appropriate penalties would keep bad behavior to a minimum. The goal of enforcement is not to stop every bad actor -- just to make the risk and hassle high enough to deter a significant portion of them. Consider how Taiwan cheaply enforces sales tax: when you get a receipt for anything, it has a lottery code on it. Winners turn their receipts in for prizes, and the government then goes and checks those specific transactions for tax compliance. Penalties for tax violations are severe, and compliance is high, at minimal cost to the state. Truly random checks (low probability of being caught) with severe penalties (massive pain if you are caught), and maybe even a reward for compliance, seems to be the way to go in this case.
friendlybus 6y ago
Garbage collectors I've met are happy people and they get paid well for the job.
triceratops 6y ago
Wages for these jobs would rise until they were filled. Or they'd be cheaper to automate away. I'm all for people doing dirty jobs to be paid more. They're doing essential, undesirable work.
- adrianN 6y ago
  As was mentioned at the start of this thread, there would be the danger that UBI is inflated away to meaninglessness if all current minimum wage jobs started paying sufficiently more to attract people. How could we prevent that without ubiquitous automation being available yet?
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > there would be the danger that UBI is inflated away to meaninglessness If that's true, doesn't it also mean UBI won't cost anything? (I realize that's some pretty twisted logic) Either the amount paid by UBI is meaningful, which means it'll make a difference to people's lives. Or it's so small as to be meaningless. Which means it won't cost that much per-capita to implement. (It's late, I haven't thought this through, feel free to downvote if this is completely bonkers :-P)
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Wages for these jobs would rise until they were filled. Which would in turn make garbage collection more expensive. Now everyone has to pay more for it, including UBI recipients. Now UBI won't be enough to live, thus UBI has to be raised, making garbage collection at the then current rate less interesting. Back to square one, repeat.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > Now everyone has to pay more for it, including UBI recipients. Now UBI won't be enough to live The second sentence doesn't necessarily follow from the first one. 1. It's hard to tell how much costs would actually rise by. 2. UBI doesn't have to be enough to live on by itself. It just has to be universal and unconditional.
taneq 6y ago
Because "stopping wanting more things once they have the basics" is totally a common human thing that humans do.
- luckylion 6y ago
  How many people will work a second job to make extra money when they can live comfortably off their main job? The relative value of "more" sinks once you have enough.
  - taneq 6y ago
    UBI isn't going to be a fat allowance to fund a comfortable life of leisure. It's going to cover subsistence level costs only. Many, many people work second jobs in order to be more comfortable. I don't think it's far-fetched to expect that most people would work a first job.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      That likely depends on the individual proponent of UBI. From what I hear in Germany, it's supposed to be higher than our current from of welfare, which puts it somewhere at ~1000 Euros a months at minimum, so you can cover an average sized apartment, subsidized health insurance, utilities etc. I know people who live -in their eyes- comfortably off of that. They see no reason to change anything, as enough is provided to eat, sleep, smoke, get drunk, have a TV and an xbox, a computer and internet and use public transportation to meet with friends. Sure, you can't easily travel, and you're not going to buy a house any time soon (but if you own one already, you can keep it; if you're still paying the mortgage, the state will cover it for you within reasonable limits), but it's a comfortable life if you don't have a lot of ambition or can make some money on the side.
  - treis 6y ago
    Lots of people do that. Or more commonly they pick up extra shifts/OT at their main job. People will still work if they have their essentials covered to buy a new car/go on vacation/ etc.

MattGaiser 6y ago

> There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created. Except that isn't what actually happens. Even without basic income and in the depths of the recession, certain categories of jobs (especially in agriculture) could not be filled. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/West_Paradox-of-Worker-Shortages.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/West_Pa...

maxwindiff 6y ago
Then those jobs won't be filled whether there is UBI or not anyway.
- deegles 6y ago
  I.E. Millions of people won't have to do backbreaking labor for pennies, that sounds good to me. Maybe the jobs shouldn't exist.
ragebol 6y ago
Then there are 2 options: automate agricultural jobs (in progress) or make the work more desirable (raise the wages and/or make it less straining)
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  John Deere alone has 100 million acres under automated tillage, worldwide.
konschubert 6y ago
Then maybe these jobs should pay better. Isn’t that how capitalism works? Conversely, if the salaries aren’t going up then there probably isn’t actually a real labour shortage. “My startup went out of business because i couldn’t find devs to work for 20K” is a statement that would rightfully get laughed at in here. When a farmer says the same thing people should equally call bullshit.
- 6y ago

drobert 6y ago

>Currently, we have under-utilised talent with low economic mobility who have bills to pay. Where is the proof of that? Unless the system is highly unmeritocratic this does not happen. Say you work at McDonald's and you're a brilliant person. You will soon be promoted and get more options. In those 8 eight hours you spend at work if you give your best you will be noticed.

falcolas 6y ago
Here’s one data point for you: There’s a fantastic writer out there that goes by the penname “A Man In Black”. He’s unable to write because he’s stuck in a medium wage job that doesn’t provide medical benefits - completely unrelated to writing - and has to spend his money to keep himself and his mother alive and in housing. As a result, he’s unable to even write in his limited spare time. That, to me, is the definition of under-utlised talent with low economic mobility. The system is, as you say, highly unmeritocratic. It has no incentive to be meritocratic for a vast majority of the population. Even your theoretical brilliant McDonalds employee would find a ceiling at the management level a raise of a mere handful of dollars over the line cooks.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  Why doesn't he use his writing to support himself? Is it really because he won't get paid until the future but he needs the money now, or is it that writing won't ever earn enough to support himself and his mother? If the latter, then it's not an under-utilized talent, it's a talent that's not worth his time to practice. Many people are good at painting or singing or other things that are fun for themselves but of very little value to others - less value than working in McDonalds. If they spent their time doing what they're good at, they'd actually be wasting their burger-flipping talents.
  - godtoldmetodoit 6y ago
    "If the market doesn't value it, it has no value" This is a sick way of thinking about the world. A parent doesn't get paid for the work they do raising their child. Better flip burgers. The lady who wants to teach under privileged youth art. Has no market value, better to flip burgers. The next JK Rowling wants to write, but her writing produces no immediate market value. Best to just flip burgers. The man who wants to help the homeless. Darn, next to no market value, better flip burgers. I'm sick of forcing everyone to live as a slave to the market. The market is not perfect. The market does not solve every human problem. The market cannot accomplish everything we want to do as a species. The market is a tool, let's treat it as one and stop worshiping it.