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The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of truly how many "

by gzu 6y ago

The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of truly how many "sucky" jobs there are in the world that all enable our (currently) superior standard of living. Your entire existence relies on a globalist system of slave level labor producing products from all corners of the world. Automation of every industry is impossible unless we have true human replacement robots (many decades out). UBI will over time simply raise costs of all goods/services to subwelfare level that people "can't live on". Whos going to: - clean your hotel/office/home - cook your food - serve your food - fix your household - grab your garbage - build new houses - build/maintain roads - build/maintain water, sewers - deliver your packages/mail - Drive trucks around - pack/unpack trucks - produce meat products (have you seen a meatpacking plant?) - maintain farms/livestock - provide difficult medical services - be a nurse aide (clean poo?) I have not even started to list all the jobs required in order to "magically" produce our cheap goods from overseas including clothing and electronics. These are farrrr from completely automated. Lazy Americans don't need to work right? Discussion about UBI is an expression of guilt over how well our standard of living (general hacker news crowd) compared to the vast majority of the world.

st1ck 6y ago
> Whos going to: - clean your hotel/office/home - cook your food - serve your food - fix your household - grab your garbage [...] People will take these "sucky" jobs, but they will be compensated well enough to justify it (since they will have an option of not working). This raise the prices overall, but not at the same level. For example, meat products prices will grow more than let's say organic vegetables. Note that demand for many of the products and services is pretty elastic (most people don't have to go to restaurants, they can cook something at home). This way at least people will have an option of having UBI and living frugally, instead of doing a crappy job.
9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them get fairly compensated for it. For example, the pay for a garbage truck driver is actually quite high, because it's an unpleasant job and they need to attract people to do it. And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated, with pickers that grab bins and empty them into the truck. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, the same job is done by three people, two of whom jog outside next to the vehicle in the sweltering heat and manually empty the bins into it. They're breaking their backs and get paid like crap.
- umvi 6y ago
  > And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated That isn't really obvious to me as having a cause/effect relationship. Could you please expound? Why would high salaries cause heavy automation in a given field?
  - hawkice 6y ago
    Automation reduces costs, which are proportional to salaries in most service industries.
    - rumanator 6y ago
      Automation only reduces cost if wages are already sufficiently high so that the cost of initial investment and maintenance is economically justified in the mid/long term. The reason you see trash pickets riding robotic trash collectors in rich western countries is simple: it's far cheaper to buy and maintain a robot than it is to pay the salaries of enough people to achieve the same goal. You don't get robotic trash collectors in southeast Asia and Africa and South America because for the price of a single robotic trash collectors you can pay the salary of a bunch of people for a few years. Hence, you get people carting wheelie bins.
- icelancer 6y ago
  >> In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them get fairly compensated for it. For example, the pay for a garbage truck driver is actually quite high, because it's an unpleasant job and they need to attract people to do it. And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated, with pickers that grab bins and empty them into the truck. This is true in America as well, FYI. It's a large source of union jobs.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    Well in New Orleans right now they’re using prisoners to break a strike. And they do ride/run behind the truck.
sysalphUS 6y ago
Thank you. These are necessary functions of society that require hard work that although maybe rewarding To some people in some capacity is mostly not desirable labor if other alternatives are available such as spending more time with family and reading whimsical books. How do you convince enough people to clean poo or raise and maintain livestock or climb inside a fuel cell in order to fulfill necessary the needs of society? We know how communism and capitalism traditionally have coerced people to do so. The reality is not pretty from either angle, but are we really even close to that alternative yet? It’s a noble premise but we have a long ways to go.
spyckie2 6y ago
UBI, at least Andrew Yang's UBI, is not going to remove those jobs - they will still be around and still be in demand because UBI isn't an income, it's a basic income, or around 1/3 of what an income should be for most people. If anything, the wages of those jobs will go up because the demand of it from laborers will go down.
uoylj 6y ago
Most of that stems from the fact that the US dollar is the main global reserve currency - so people around the world are willing to accept them in exchange for real goods and services. This won't be the case forever. Once it flips, the magically cheap overseas goods become the expensive imported goods only rich people can afford.
- f00zz 6y ago
  Yeah, just a century ago the reserve currency was the pound sterling, a century before that the franc, a century before that the Dutch guilder. I guess people in those times also expected the status quo to last forever.
jedberg 6y ago
> Whos going to: .... The same people who do those jobs now -- mostly immigrants. Only citizens would get UBI. That's why it's really important to have a good minimum wage and protections for those employees, so they don't get abused.
- Aunche 6y ago
  This is basically how it works in Saudi Arabia. Citizens are guaranteed a job where they can get away with doing nothing. If they happen to be fired, they get a monthly stipend until the government finds them another job. As a result, most of the real work is done by immigrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabi...
grecy 6y ago
> The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of truly how many "sucky" jobs there are in the world that all enable our (currently) superior standard of living. Your comment makes it complete clear you have a severe lack of real world experience. Go to a wealthy country. I mean an actual wealthy one where even lower class people are paid well enough to buy a house, have a project car, get at least 6 weeks vacation a year, get generous maternity leave etc. etc. Now look around and notice that all those sucky jobs you talks about are getting done. Also notice that in those wealthy countries people can quite readily choose to get welfare to the tune of a few grand a month. They could perfectly sit around and do nothing and get enough money to live, if they wanted to. But they don't. Why do you think that is? It's because they're paid well to do those jobs. As long as jobs (even sucky ones) pay well, there will always be a line of people willing to do them. If there are no people willing to do them, pay more. As a real-world example I used to live in one such country and I worked in a factory stacking boxes. All day, every day. Pick up box, turn around, put down box. Starting hourly rate was $45/hr. Time and half on Sundays. Double time on a holiday. No union, those were just the pay rates. The company I worked for still made a healthy profit, and so did the end company the boxes were being stacked for (Safeway, actually)
- GordonS 6y ago
  Not sure if you are thinking of Scandinavian countries? If so, I think you're exaggerating the wealth of your average citizen a tad, even if the point still stands. But in Scandinavian countries it seems to be mainly immigrants that do the sucky jobs, even if they are better compensated than elsewhere (although of course everything is more expensive, food, housing, etc).
triceratops 6y ago
> Whos going to: - clean your home - cook your food - serve your food Me? I already do all that without UBI. With UBI everyone who has the inclination will have the time and resources to do it.

by gzu 6y ago

st1ck 6y ago

> Whos going to: - clean your hotel/office/home - cook your food - serve your food - fix your household - grab your garbage [...] People will take these "sucky" jobs, but they will be compensated well enough to justify it (since they will have an option of not working). This raise the prices overall, but not at the same level. For example, meat products prices will grow more than let's say organic vegetables. Note that demand for many of the products and services is pretty elastic (most people don't have to go to restaurants, they can cook something at home). This way at least people will have an option of having UBI and living frugally, instead of doing a crappy job.

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago

In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them get fairly compensated for it. For example, the pay for a garbage truck driver is actually quite high, because it's an unpleasant job and they need to attract people to do it. And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated, with pickers that grab bins and empty them into the truck. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, the same job is done by three people, two of whom jog outside next to the vehicle in the sweltering heat and manually empty the bins into it. They're breaking their backs and get paid like crap.

umvi 6y ago
> And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated That isn't really obvious to me as having a cause/effect relationship. Could you please expound? Why would high salaries cause heavy automation in a given field?
- hawkice 6y ago
  Automation reduces costs, which are proportional to salaries in most service industries.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    Automation only reduces cost if wages are already sufficiently high so that the cost of initial investment and maintenance is economically justified in the mid/long term. The reason you see trash pickets riding robotic trash collectors in rich western countries is simple: it's far cheaper to buy and maintain a robot than it is to pay the salaries of enough people to achieve the same goal. You don't get robotic trash collectors in southeast Asia and Africa and South America because for the price of a single robotic trash collectors you can pay the salary of a bunch of people for a few years. Hence, you get people carting wheelie bins.
icelancer 6y ago
>> In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them get fairly compensated for it. For example, the pay for a garbage truck driver is actually quite high, because it's an unpleasant job and they need to attract people to do it. And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated, with pickers that grab bins and empty them into the truck. This is true in America as well, FYI. It's a large source of union jobs.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Well in New Orleans right now they’re using prisoners to break a strike. And they do ride/run behind the truck.

sysalphUS 6y ago

Thank you. These are necessary functions of society that require hard work that although maybe rewarding To some people in some capacity is mostly not desirable labor if other alternatives are available such as spending more time with family and reading whimsical books. How do you convince enough people to clean poo or raise and maintain livestock or climb inside a fuel cell in order to fulfill necessary the needs of society? We know how communism and capitalism traditionally have coerced people to do so. The reality is not pretty from either angle, but are we really even close to that alternative yet? It’s a noble premise but we have a long ways to go.

spyckie2 6y ago

UBI, at least Andrew Yang's UBI, is not going to remove those jobs - they will still be around and still be in demand because UBI isn't an income, it's a basic income, or around 1/3 of what an income should be for most people. If anything, the wages of those jobs will go up because the demand of it from laborers will go down.

uoylj 6y ago

Most of that stems from the fact that the US dollar is the main global reserve currency - so people around the world are willing to accept them in exchange for real goods and services. This won't be the case forever. Once it flips, the magically cheap overseas goods become the expensive imported goods only rich people can afford.

f00zz 6y ago
Yeah, just a century ago the reserve currency was the pound sterling, a century before that the franc, a century before that the Dutch guilder. I guess people in those times also expected the status quo to last forever.

jedberg 6y ago

> Whos going to: .... The same people who do those jobs now -- mostly immigrants. Only citizens would get UBI. That's why it's really important to have a good minimum wage and protections for those employees, so they don't get abused.

Aunche 6y ago
This is basically how it works in Saudi Arabia. Citizens are guaranteed a job where they can get away with doing nothing. If they happen to be fired, they get a monthly stipend until the government finds them another job. As a result, most of the real work is done by immigrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabi...

grecy 6y ago

> The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of truly how many "sucky" jobs there are in the world that all enable our (currently) superior standard of living. Your comment makes it complete clear you have a severe lack of real world experience. Go to a wealthy country. I mean an actual wealthy one where even lower class people are paid well enough to buy a house, have a project car, get at least 6 weeks vacation a year, get generous maternity leave etc. etc. Now look around and notice that all those sucky jobs you talks about are getting done. Also notice that in those wealthy countries people can quite readily choose to get welfare to the tune of a few grand a month. They could perfectly sit around and do nothing and get enough money to live, if they wanted to. But they don't. Why do you think that is? It's because they're paid well to do those jobs. As long as jobs (even sucky ones) pay well, there will always be a line of people willing to do them. If there are no people willing to do them, pay more. As a real-world example I used to live in one such country and I worked in a factory stacking boxes. All day, every day. Pick up box, turn around, put down box. Starting hourly rate was $45/hr. Time and half on Sundays. Double time on a holiday. No union, those were just the pay rates. The company I worked for still made a healthy profit, and so did the end company the boxes were being stacked for (Safeway, actually)

GordonS 6y ago
Not sure if you are thinking of Scandinavian countries? If so, I think you're exaggerating the wealth of your average citizen a tad, even if the point still stands. But in Scandinavian countries it seems to be mainly immigrants that do the sucky jobs, even if they are better compensated than elsewhere (although of course everything is more expensive, food, housing, etc).

triceratops 6y ago

> Whos going to: - clean your home - cook your food - serve your food Me? I already do all that without UBI. With UBI everyone who has the inclination will have the time and resources to do it.