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If everyone has a job except you, unemployment is a lonely and depressing endeavour. If the majority of your friend circle is unemployed, it becomes something d
by nikanj 6y ago
If everyone has a job except you, unemployment is a lonely and depressing endeavour. If the majority of your friend circle is unemployed, it becomes something different.
In Canada with CERB ($400/week), it's been like being a school kid on summer break all over again. You have very little money, but can spend endless days reconnecting with your friends, hiking, playing games, learning music, et cetera.
Not many people want to get a job - as it's just as fun as being the only kid in your group who got a job at 17. You might be making money, but everyone else is making out at the midnight bonfire
- Archio 6y ago>You have very little money, but can spend endless days reconnecting with your friends, hiking, playing games, learning music, et cetera. The horror! Sounds like these employers need to raise wages to do better than the absolute minimum. If higher paying jobs are available, people will work. And some people still won't, but those people weren't going to work much anyway.
- nikanj 6y agoI wasn't saying it's horrible, I was trying to explain why people choose to remain unemployed. Setting the right level for benefits is hard: Either the basic income is high enough to provide for a good life (why would I get a job), or it's not high enough to pay for food, shelter, bills (why do we treat our unemployed people this badly). Rising the wages across the board raises prices sooner or later. That probably moves the unemployment money from the former category to the latter via inflation, which does motivate people to get a job, but screws the people who can't get a job. I have no solutions to offer. This is a gnarly problem, featured for example in the Grasshopper and the Ant, first recorded in Aesop's fables from ~600BC. Enjoying life is wonderful, but if everyone enjoys life, we'll all starve.
- aspaviento 6y ago> Enjoying life is wonderful, but if everyone enjoys life, we'll all starve. Maybe the solution is in the middle: make work time as little as possible so people who work can also enjoy life and pay them according to that time.
- harpiaharpyja 6y agoI have to agree, I suspect the culture of mandatory 8 hours a day 5 days a week leads to a massive amount of wasted work hours put in just to fill the time (when considered across everyone in society who works under such conditions). It's a net loss for society as a whole.
- mistrial9 6y agooh how wrong you are -- according to Jack Ma in China: Jack Ma endorses China’s controversial (996) 12 hours a day, 6 days a week work culture
- ku-man 6y agoThat poor devil. The communists took good care of him. He doesn't talk loud anymore.
- namelessoracle 6y agoIs it any suprise that a chinese elite would advocate a "work makes free" policy?
- taurath 6y agoBasic income would allow for people to focus on their own health and take work when they want to do something. Part of technological and societal progress is that we don’t use the threat of starvation for people to better for themselves. We have enough money to bring up the bottom economic class and still let the top have their private cruise ships.
- sokoloff 6y agoIf you doubled federal individual income taxes for everyone in the US, you could pay each adult US citizen around $750/mo in UBI with that increase. If you doubled ALL federal income taxes in the US, you could pay each adult US citizen ~$1500/mo in UBI. The math is daunting because the number of people is so high.
- jl2718 6y agoNo. Because nobody would work, and corporations would invest all revenues offshore. The country would be destroyed, and you’d get nothing. Income taxation is one of the most economically destructive and violent ways to generate revenues. Do you seriously think it’s a good idea to point guns at people doing the work and tell them to give you 80-100% of their pay because you think you deserve it for doing nothing? Only a violent sociopath would do that, right? Please tell me how your proposal is different.
- sokoloff 6y agoSorry if it wasn’t clear (and I can see how I left it slightly unclear). I don’t see any viable path to paying UBI at those relatively low levels because the tax burden on people and companies is too high. (And frankly, $750/mo isn’t enough to accomplish what the UBI advocates want to promise which is to make work literally optional.)
- jhauris 6y agoI'm not at all convinced of UBI, but does your math include removing all the tax that pays for benefits that would no longer be needed such as unemployment, social security, etc.? It seems removing those benefits would reduce the tax burden significantly.
- staticassertion 6y ago> Rising the wages across the board raises prices sooner or later. Does it actually have to though? If a company is still profitable it doesn't actually have to raise its prices just because its profits go down.
- nikanj 6y agoTypical margins in various unskilled labour jobs are under 10%, and labour is usually one of the big ticket items on the budget. If payroll goes up 30%, prices have to go up - or the business goes bankrupt. Next up, someone who saw Founder is going to point out that McDonalds makes money from rent, not selling food. Sure, that might be true for McDonalds-the-corporation, but the McDonalds-down-the-street franchise will have to come up with the payroll money somehow. Your average business is way less profitable than you think.
- duckfang 6y agoIf a company relies on wage slavery and the implicit American threat of 'no work: no housing, no food, no medical', then those companies should die. Edit: it's funny how I'm modded down, but this is straight up 'Socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor'. And it's doubly insulting that the unemployment "insurance" is being pulled en masse, with only regard to the monied elite. Then again, I'd expect no less coming from a den of VC's and their ilk. They certainly don't care about the human.
- i_haz_rabies 6y agoHN likes to think it is better than reddit, but boy oh boy you better not talk about vegetarianism or wealth taxes.
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- antihero 6y agoThere's also another factor which I think is important. If working was simple enough to be a bit dull but not horrendously unpleasant due to companies that wish to work people to the bone, patronise them, and forcing them to submit to nasty management, it might be a more attractive concept. If people are desperate for work, they are vulnerable to the absolutely disgusting way they are treated and exploited by employers. I find that in tech that employers treat me fantastically because I have more of a value proposition and am thus bargaining from a stronger perspective. If working is so bad that it's actively damaging to my mental and physical health, I would be doing everything I can to avoid it.
- 52-6F-62 6y agoThe unfortunate side is that the people voting on and installing policies that don’t help workers but tend to punish them have never seen that side of life—one where they’ve had to operate at the mercy of a cruel employer out of desperation and just plain survival. We can surely do better than that, but it takes empathy. For that reason, my hopes are tempered.
- gumby 6y ago> Enjoying life is wonderful, but if everyone enjoys life, we'll all starve. What a grim, zero-sum view. How about working and enjoying life?
- mbg721 6y agoI think it's more accurate to say "If everyone optimizes for immediate enjoyment all the time, we all starve."
- UncleMeat 6y agoAnd if everybody optimizes for capital markets all the time, people die without living.
- mbg721 6y agoFor sure! I would never advocate "maximize other people's money" as a philosophy around which anyone should center their life. The idea is to convince everyone to buy into an economy that works, and then live life around that.
- ABeeSea 6y agoPrices are a function of supply and demand, not the cost of labor.
- missedthecue 6y agoBut if the equilibrium is below the cost of production, no one will bother producing.
- Barrin92 6y agoif you mandate higher wages by making firms compete with welfare all you do is create wage-push inflation, because to fund the higher wages companies will have to raise prices. Your average business where low-paid people work, like services or retail or hairdressers don't have some crazy margins where you can magically conjure up money out of the ether.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoBig companies can also lower profits. I know it's a shocking idea, but it is possible. Sometimes when that happens more money ends up in the local economy and hairdressers etc can charge more and pay more without pricing themselves out of the market. It's the difference between an optimistic and inclusive economy and a depressive and retentive one which tries to minimise shared opportunity.
- Barrin92 6y agoThere's not a lot of big, profitable business in Montana (in fact apparently the largest company in the state has about 10k employees). What you're talking about is monopsony power which yes, can depress wages, but as the article points out Montana has an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent and every sector has labour shortages. It's a tight, competitive labour market, not a loose one. There is no magic here. If everyone charges more and pays more you have, on aggregate, gained nothing. That's the point, if merely raising nominal wages would make everyone better off we'd have a magic button to solve poverty.
- yarcob 6y ago> If everyone charges more and pays more you have, on aggregate, gained nothing You would reduce income inequality. People who earn money from labour would now earn more vs. people who earn money from capital gains. It would also incentivise investing into production companies rather than passive investments like real estate.
- koolba 6y ago
- jl2718 6y agoI think the bigger problem is that the work environment has turned into political hell.
- rednerrus 6y agoYou’d have to pay a ton of money to get people to give up free time with their friends having fun.
- BurningFrog 6y ago"If you can't afford what you need, you just have to pay more" is a true statement, but not much of a solution in most cases.
- smnrchrds 6y ago> The horror! The scary part is the deficit we are incurring to pay for it. It's not sustainable. The benefits cannot be extended indefinitely. EDIT: In Canada
- freeone3000 6y agoThe last time the federal government had a surplus was 2001. If we can manage to sustain a twenty-year deficit for expeditionary wars, but can't to sustain the health and well-being or our own people, our priorities are incredibly inverted.
- smnrchrds 6y agoI live in Canada and was talking about Canada, as was the GP. I don't know the fiscal capacity of the US. But here, CERB/CRB are not sustainable with our current fiscal capacity.
- axiosgunnar 6y agoSo you appeal to the market forces (just pay more!), but ignore the massive distortion of market forces due to welfare that has increased a lot since the pandemic started?
- kstenerud 6y ago* headsmack * Of course! It all makes sense now! These people are fundamentally lazy and need to get off the public teat. They need a "dad" to kick them in their lazy ass to start contributing something for a change instead of being parasites on society! How silly of me. Thanks for explaining.
- rob74 6y agoGood for you! Now that you finally got it, you'll vote Republican/Conservative/whatever-it's-called-where-you-live next time too, I hope? /s
- Brian_K_White 6y agoPeople downvoting... Guys, read it slower or something.
- thomasahle 6y ago> You have very little money, but can spend endless days reconnecting with your friends, hiking, playing games, learning music, et cetera. Doesn't sound like a bad life to be honest. Good to hear we have a bright future if we ever get AI to take all the jobs.
- asdff 6y agoBut then how will the landlords get paid?
- jessaustin 6y agoIf robots are doing all the work, why would landlords be paid for anything?
- antihero 6y agoBecause they own stuff and see it as their right to make money for doing nothing.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y agoFirstly, fairly obvious you've never been a landlord. Second of all, yes, making money by owning stuff is called capitalism and that is the system we have.
- antihero 6y agoThank you so much for your enlightening comment. Clearly I understood neither of those things and now, I do.
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- sokoloff 6y agoIf the landlords won’t be paid for anything, why would they provide housing for tenants? Then where will the tenants live? Whatever you think of landlords, people do in general prefer to live indoors and landlords are in the business of offering that service.
- lethologica 6y agoI'm in a similar situation in Australia with roughly the same monetary benefits from Centrelink. An extended summer break really is what it feels like. Honestly, I don't even miss the money I used to make and my mental health has improved so dramatically that going back to work just to make the same amount (with the jobs that are currently available here) just seems absolutely crazy. It is very hard though when everyone else around you acts as though being on government assistance makes you some kind of a useless, good for nothing leech who doesn't even deserve to have food or a roof over their head.
- taurath 6y agoAs opposed to the bigger leaches which are the rich who make money just by having it. Bill gates has tripled his net worth while trying to give it away. If the rich won’t do anything at least improve conditions for people stuck on the bottom.
- yokaze 6y ago> Not many people want to get a job How can one reconcile your hypothesis with the recent employment statistics: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210409/dq210409a-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210409/dq210... There is a clear uptake from record unemployment. Having a good work in your life is still more fulfilling than just leisure for most people, on top of that, you can afford more things. Yes, shitty jobs have trouble finding people. I personally see that not as a downside, but rather an upside of the whole thing.
- taurath 6y agoThe solution seems to be to force people back into the shitty jobs by threatening them with starvation rather than improving conditions. Much has been said about how much of a dead end this jobs are but I’d like to reiterate how incredibly difficult it is when you have no time to improve your lot in life. There’s so many statistics about how poverty and poverty jobs are a trap that most never escape in the US compared to other developed countries.
- mercer 6y ago(paid) work or leisure is a false dichotomy. What people want, and what fulfils them, is meaningful activity, not 'work' in itself. Work can provide meaning in various ways (care for colleagues, creative expression, a 'goal' to work towards, etc.) and the idea of having more money can be somewhat meaningful, of course (especially if you really need it!). But there are tons of other meaningful and fulfilling things a person can do with their time, and I'm willing to bet that most people would prefer most of those over having to do 'stuff' for a 'boss/manager' in a hierarchical organization that might (in part) not provide much meaning other than making money for them and hopefully enough for yourself.
- dools 6y agoWork is what we do for others. Hobbies are what we do for ourselves. We can widen the definition of work to be far more inclusive, and then structure a program to compensate people for doing that work http://www.jobguarantee.org/ http://www.jobguarantee.org/
- jmpz 6y agoI think you're forgetting the detail of the very little money you're making from unemployment not being enough to afford things like rent, food, health care, children.. You're privileged bias is showing when you refer to hiking, playing games, learning music rather than trying to buy medication or keep a roof over your head.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- i_haz_rabies 6y agoYou make a fair point.
- passtheglass 6y agoIt's hard to even make enough money to buy a house/save for retirement, is there any wonder why people don't want to work, when all it affords them only a marginally less meagre existence, with no leisure time to enjoy it?
- bluefirebrand 6y ago> Not many people want to get a job - as it's just as fun as being the only kid in your group who got a job at 17. You might be making money, but everyone else is making out at the midnight bonfire This is honestly kind of true. I'm the only person in my friend group who has been working full time the entire pandemic and I've definitely been missing out on fun. Oh well. Someone has to pay for CERB.
- barbazoo 6y agoYou mean before they discontinued it last September? As the name suggests, it was a temporary taxable benefit. Unfortunately we don't have a UBI in Canada yet.
- grecy 6y agoCanada transitioned CERB into a more-permissible Employment Insurance (EI). I'm sure the poster you are replying to means they've moved onto that.
- JeremyNT 6y agoThis sounds like the world I want to live in! Shouldn't our miraculous technological advances and enormous wealth enable this lifestyle for anybody who wants it (rather than just the idle oligarch class, which has not only the luxury of not working, but the luxury of actual luxury to go with it?)