6 ms·

That's a very narrative driven world view. The problem with UBI is that some jobs suck but need to be done, and if you set a guaranteed income for doing nothing

That's a very narrative driven world view. The problem with UBI is that some jobs suck but need to be done, and if you set a guaranteed income for doing nothing the incentive for doing that job suddenly needs to be a lot higher to compete. Saying that it's just the capital owners is ridiculous - consider for eg. elderly care - good luck living in with your demented mother who needs assistance to perform even the basic tasks - you think capital owners are the ones unable to afford elderly care ? And so on and so forth.

antonzabirko 6y ago
On the flip side, UBI will increase the revenue from those jobs. The less desirable jobs will pay more simply due to supply and demand.
- bostonvaulter2 6y ago
  And if no one wants to do the job for the given price then it becomes more worthwhile to invest in additional automation.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  Possibly - but I doubt it will be proportional for the undesirable jobs. It would be a volatile transition period either way.
- syshum 6y ago
  Pay like all goods on in a market are not infinitely elastic to just say the pay will simply increase because the supply of workers drop. For example lets look at janitorial labor, that is a hard job to automate and it is required in every business. So many would think that an increase to say $15/hr would just mean all the companies would just pay the same number of workers $15/hr right? No, what you would find it maybe instead of daily trash pickup it goes to 2 times a week, or employee's are asked to take their office trash themselves to a common trash bin. Common area's are cleaned less frequently, other employee's are asked to pick up some slack, and the janitorial staff will go from 10 workers to 6 , with a responsibility of 4 floors vs 2, or other such adjustments to the "acceptable" level of janitorial services. The business has a budget of X for janitorial, that will not change very much simply because UBI or Min Wage came into play, they will just have to accept less janitorial services for the same money (aka inflation)
thatguy0900 6y ago
So poor people need to exist because otherwise we wouldn't be able to force people to do things we ourselves wouldnt want to do? And if they are not poor they would stop being in awful servitude jobs noone wants? I guess it just sucks to be born poor then, too bad we can't help them
- aww_dang 6y ago
  At the end of the day most people don't want to work, but the option to be paid for not working isn't available. We all dislike working to some extent. Otherwise we would do it for free, as a hobby. There are some low paid jobs people choose out of passion or interest. There are also bottom rung jobs that beginners with no job skills can enter. Think about people with no language skills, don't they deserve a chance to be productive? Even some of the lowest paid workers take pride in their work. Some of the savoir-esque rhetoric here borders on condescension.
  - gtsop 6y ago
    > At the end of the day most people don't want to work [...] We all dislike working to some extent. Where did you get that from? I really think the opposite is true.
    - antonzabirko 6y ago
      Do you want to work for free then? I understand money is used for supporting yourself, but do you honestly work for free after-hours? Everyone has better things to do than work. Travel the world, make businesses, and spend time with family. You'd rather work?
    - executive 6y ago
      Sir, this is a Wendy's
    - aww_dang 6y ago
      Why not work for free as I suggested above? Why do employers compete for labor by providing incentives?
gtsop 6y ago
Do you see the irony in that the shity jobs that noone wants to do are the ones that pay less? There is another solution to give incentive there, raise the salaries for these shity jobs to attract people. It is very convinient that this shityjob-noincentive argument is being propagated by the same people who will never have to do these jobs or live by limited money.
- aww_dang 6y ago
  >argument is being propagated by the same people who will never have to do these jobs or live by limited money How were you able to determine this from across the Internet?
  - gtsop 6y ago
    > How were you able to determine this from across the Internet? Who told you my source is the internet? :) we all live irl and discuss with people. I never heard a low-paid worker throw this argument. It always comes from people who have better jobs and more stable income
    - aww_dang 6y ago
      It appears as a variant of the 'check your privilege' argument. Everyone who disagrees with UBI, minimum wage increases is privileged and lacking empathy according to this generalization. While the actual thread appears to be about incentives. There are many who have worked entry level jobs who would object to UBI or minimum wage price fixing on purely economic terms. There are also those who are unable to afford the current cost of living or gain employment due to interventions in the market. It wouldn't be difficult to unfairly characterize interventionists as insensitive to the plight of the poor.
      - gtsop 6y ago
        > Everyone who disagrees with UBI, minimum wage increases is privileged and lacking empathy according to this generalization. First, I didn't make such a generalization and second, even if I did, you would have inverted the logic. I said argument X comes only from people of category R, who are not affected by a problem. This doesn't mean all people in R agree with argument X. It means That I've never heard argument X from people outside R
true_religion 6y ago
I recently went through my mothers health failing and then subsequent death. If I didn’t have to work, I absolutely would have cared for her myself. However, there is no way I could have quit working and keep the house in a relatively expensive area that I bought to be close to job opportunities. UBI changes the calculus dramatically. Suddenly you can just do things for yourself .
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  How would 1,000 a month change this calculus for you? For the 50% of american paying paying taxes, this means 1,000 less a month.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  Unless your job is pointless - you quitting your job to take care of your mother is a net loss for the economy and again makes things less accessible for everyone - nursing homes are an optimisation. It sounds nice to give people the option but your argument is exactly why substantial UBI is a dangerous concept.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > Unless your job is pointless - you quitting your job to take care of your mother is a net loss for the economy and again makes things less accessible for everyone Some people prefer to live at home rather than go to a nursing home. What's worthless about giving those people better care that more closely aligns with their preferences? > is a net loss for the economy This is such a weird way of thinking about activity that happens outside the market. Should I feel guilty about cooking my own meals because I haven't payed a restaurant worker to do it? Sometimes people do things outside of the market, and that's OK, they don't have to feel guilty about that. The market exists to help us live our lives, not the other way around. Whether GP watches their parents on their own or hires someone else to do it, the parents are still getting watched, and somebody is still doing that as part of their "job". That's the important part. You're concerned about prices going up, but what GP is describing would be vastly cheaper than paying for assisted living on the market today. It's making in-home assisted living more available than it currently is on the market. Why would that be a bad thing?
dd_roger 6y ago
Yeah that's a major issue that I bring up everytime UBI is discussed and that for some reason UBI proponents never address. If UBI isn't high enough to ensure that welfare as we currently know it isn't needed anymore, then why have UBI at all? It just adds complexity to the system for no apparent gain. On the other hand if UBI is high enough to go by without working there's a lot of things that just won't get done anymore.
imtringued 6y ago
UBI is the wrong tool to solve inequality because there is already an existing tool for that. It's called inflation.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  Inflation is the best tool to create inequality - rich people are always closest to the money source.
A12-B 6y ago
Why are jobs that are needed the most paid the least? That is some sort of manufactured contradiction. If they are paid low because they are easily replaceable, why are they the most needed jobs? If they are paid low because they aren't needed, then they aren't needed and shouldn't exist. What could a third possibility be for these jobs being paid so low, i wonder? He said, facetiously knowing the answer
danShumway 6y ago
> The problem with UBI is that some jobs suck but need to be done I'm somewhat skeptical of the UBI train, but this particular objection has always rubbed me the wrong way. Those jobs should cost more. If the only thing keeping people in a job is the threat of poverty, and they're not being paid enough otherwise to incentivize them to do the work, then that's not a free market. It's not really significantly different from holding a gun to their head or coercing them into doing the work. What's going to happen if the people stuck in dead-end jobs retrain to work at better jobs? What's going to happen if the economy improves and suddenly they have more opportunities? The problem with underpaying essential jobs is that it forces people to think of those market outcomes as undesirable. I don't like the framing that says that if elderly-care workers retrain and have a choice whether or not to work in nursing homes, that's a bad thing. That seems very, very counter to how we should think about a healthy jobs market. I don't want a framing that tells me that the economy becoming too good or people having too many job opportunities is a problem because those people need to be financially pressured into working underpaid jobs. To me, that's a very anti-free-market way of thinking about the economy. Jobs that are difficult or undesirable should have more compensation because they have less demand. That is the entire basis of the jobs market and of supply/demand, we shouldn't be trying to undermine those principles.

antonzabirko 6y ago

On the flip side, UBI will increase the revenue from those jobs. The less desirable jobs will pay more simply due to supply and demand.

bostonvaulter2 6y ago
And if no one wants to do the job for the given price then it becomes more worthwhile to invest in additional automation.
reader_mode 6y ago
Possibly - but I doubt it will be proportional for the undesirable jobs. It would be a volatile transition period either way.
syshum 6y ago
Pay like all goods on in a market are not infinitely elastic to just say the pay will simply increase because the supply of workers drop. For example lets look at janitorial labor, that is a hard job to automate and it is required in every business. So many would think that an increase to say $15/hr would just mean all the companies would just pay the same number of workers $15/hr right? No, what you would find it maybe instead of daily trash pickup it goes to 2 times a week, or employee's are asked to take their office trash themselves to a common trash bin. Common area's are cleaned less frequently, other employee's are asked to pick up some slack, and the janitorial staff will go from 10 workers to 6 , with a responsibility of 4 floors vs 2, or other such adjustments to the "acceptable" level of janitorial services. The business has a budget of X for janitorial, that will not change very much simply because UBI or Min Wage came into play, they will just have to accept less janitorial services for the same money (aka inflation)

thatguy0900 6y ago

So poor people need to exist because otherwise we wouldn't be able to force people to do things we ourselves wouldnt want to do? And if they are not poor they would stop being in awful servitude jobs noone wants? I guess it just sucks to be born poor then, too bad we can't help them

aww_dang 6y ago
At the end of the day most people don't want to work, but the option to be paid for not working isn't available. We all dislike working to some extent. Otherwise we would do it for free, as a hobby. There are some low paid jobs people choose out of passion or interest. There are also bottom rung jobs that beginners with no job skills can enter. Think about people with no language skills, don't they deserve a chance to be productive? Even some of the lowest paid workers take pride in their work. Some of the savoir-esque rhetoric here borders on condescension.
- gtsop 6y ago
  > At the end of the day most people don't want to work [...] We all dislike working to some extent. Where did you get that from? I really think the opposite is true.
  - antonzabirko 6y ago
    Do you want to work for free then? I understand money is used for supporting yourself, but do you honestly work for free after-hours? Everyone has better things to do than work. Travel the world, make businesses, and spend time with family. You'd rather work?
  - executive 6y ago
    Sir, this is a Wendy's
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    Why not work for free as I suggested above? Why do employers compete for labor by providing incentives?

gtsop 6y ago

Do you see the irony in that the shity jobs that noone wants to do are the ones that pay less? There is another solution to give incentive there, raise the salaries for these shity jobs to attract people. It is very convinient that this shityjob-noincentive argument is being propagated by the same people who will never have to do these jobs or live by limited money.

aww_dang 6y ago
>argument is being propagated by the same people who will never have to do these jobs or live by limited money How were you able to determine this from across the Internet?
- gtsop 6y ago
  > How were you able to determine this from across the Internet? Who told you my source is the internet? :) we all live irl and discuss with people. I never heard a low-paid worker throw this argument. It always comes from people who have better jobs and more stable income
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    It appears as a variant of the 'check your privilege' argument. Everyone who disagrees with UBI, minimum wage increases is privileged and lacking empathy according to this generalization. While the actual thread appears to be about incentives. There are many who have worked entry level jobs who would object to UBI or minimum wage price fixing on purely economic terms. There are also those who are unable to afford the current cost of living or gain employment due to interventions in the market. It wouldn't be difficult to unfairly characterize interventionists as insensitive to the plight of the poor.
    - gtsop 6y ago
      > Everyone who disagrees with UBI, minimum wage increases is privileged and lacking empathy according to this generalization. First, I didn't make such a generalization and second, even if I did, you would have inverted the logic. I said argument X comes only from people of category R, who are not affected by a problem. This doesn't mean all people in R agree with argument X. It means That I've never heard argument X from people outside R

true_religion 6y ago

I recently went through my mothers health failing and then subsequent death. If I didn’t have to work, I absolutely would have cared for her myself. However, there is no way I could have quit working and keep the house in a relatively expensive area that I bought to be close to job opportunities. UBI changes the calculus dramatically. Suddenly you can just do things for yourself .

s1artibartfast 6y ago
How would 1,000 a month change this calculus for you? For the 50% of american paying paying taxes, this means 1,000 less a month.
reader_mode 6y ago
Unless your job is pointless - you quitting your job to take care of your mother is a net loss for the economy and again makes things less accessible for everyone - nursing homes are an optimisation. It sounds nice to give people the option but your argument is exactly why substantial UBI is a dangerous concept.
- danShumway 6y ago
  > Unless your job is pointless - you quitting your job to take care of your mother is a net loss for the economy and again makes things less accessible for everyone Some people prefer to live at home rather than go to a nursing home. What's worthless about giving those people better care that more closely aligns with their preferences? > is a net loss for the economy This is such a weird way of thinking about activity that happens outside the market. Should I feel guilty about cooking my own meals because I haven't payed a restaurant worker to do it? Sometimes people do things outside of the market, and that's OK, they don't have to feel guilty about that. The market exists to help us live our lives, not the other way around. Whether GP watches their parents on their own or hires someone else to do it, the parents are still getting watched, and somebody is still doing that as part of their "job". That's the important part. You're concerned about prices going up, but what GP is describing would be vastly cheaper than paying for assisted living on the market today. It's making in-home assisted living more available than it currently is on the market. Why would that be a bad thing?

dd_roger 6y ago

Yeah that's a major issue that I bring up everytime UBI is discussed and that for some reason UBI proponents never address. If UBI isn't high enough to ensure that welfare as we currently know it isn't needed anymore, then why have UBI at all? It just adds complexity to the system for no apparent gain. On the other hand if UBI is high enough to go by without working there's a lot of things that just won't get done anymore.

imtringued 6y ago

UBI is the wrong tool to solve inequality because there is already an existing tool for that. It's called inflation.

reader_mode 6y ago
Inflation is the best tool to create inequality - rich people are always closest to the money source.

A12-B 6y ago

Why are jobs that are needed the most paid the least? That is some sort of manufactured contradiction. If they are paid low because they are easily replaceable, why are they the most needed jobs? If they are paid low because they aren't needed, then they aren't needed and shouldn't exist. What could a third possibility be for these jobs being paid so low, i wonder? He said, facetiously knowing the answer

danShumway 6y ago

> The problem with UBI is that some jobs suck but need to be done I'm somewhat skeptical of the UBI train, but this particular objection has always rubbed me the wrong way. Those jobs should cost more. If the only thing keeping people in a job is the threat of poverty, and they're not being paid enough otherwise to incentivize them to do the work, then that's not a free market. It's not really significantly different from holding a gun to their head or coercing them into doing the work. What's going to happen if the people stuck in dead-end jobs retrain to work at better jobs? What's going to happen if the economy improves and suddenly they have more opportunities? The problem with underpaying essential jobs is that it forces people to think of those market outcomes as undesirable. I don't like the framing that says that if elderly-care workers retrain and have a choice whether or not to work in nursing homes, that's a bad thing. That seems very, very counter to how we should think about a healthy jobs market. I don't want a framing that tells me that the economy becoming too good or people having too many job opportunities is a problem because those people need to be financially pressured into working underpaid jobs. To me, that's a very anti-free-market way of thinking about the economy. Jobs that are difficult or undesirable should have more compensation because they have less demand. That is the entire basis of the jobs market and of supply/demand, we shouldn't be trying to undermine those principles.