11 ms·

>You have very little money, but can spend endless days reconnecting with your friends, hiking, playing games, learning music, et cetera. The horror! Sounds li

by Archio 5y 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 5y ago
I 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 5y 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 5y ago
    I 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 5y ago
      oh 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 5y ago
        That poor devil. The communists took good care of him. He doesn't talk loud anymore.
      - namelessoracle 5y ago
        Is it any suprise that a chinese elite would advocate a "work makes free" policy?
- taurath 5y ago
  Basic 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 5y ago
    If 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 5y ago
      No. 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 5y ago
        Sorry 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 5y ago
        I'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 5y 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 5y ago
    Typical 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 5y ago
      If 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 5y ago
        HN likes to think it is better than reddit, but boy oh boy you better not talk about vegetarianism or wealth taxes.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- antihero 5y ago
  There'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 5y ago
    The 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 5y 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 5y ago
    I think it's more accurate to say "If everyone optimizes for immediate enjoyment all the time, we all starve."
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      And if everybody optimizes for capital markets all the time, people die without living.
      - mbg721 5y ago
        For 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 5y ago
  Prices are a function of supply and demand, not the cost of labor.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    But if the equilibrium is below the cost of production, no one will bother producing.
Barrin92 5y ago
if 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 5y ago
  Big 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 5y ago
    There'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 5y 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 5y ago
jl2718 5y ago
I think the bigger problem is that the work environment has turned into political hell.
rednerrus 5y ago
You’d have to pay a ton of money to get people to give up free time with their friends having fun.
BurningFrog 5y 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 5y 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 5y ago
  The 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 5y ago
    I 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 5y ago
So 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?

by Archio 5y ago

nikanj 5y ago

I 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 5y 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 5y ago
  I 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 5y ago
    oh 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 5y ago
      That poor devil. The communists took good care of him. He doesn't talk loud anymore.
    - namelessoracle 5y ago
      Is it any suprise that a chinese elite would advocate a "work makes free" policy?
taurath 5y ago
Basic 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 5y ago
  If 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 5y ago
    No. 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 5y ago
      Sorry 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 5y ago
        I'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 5y 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 5y ago
  Typical 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 5y ago
    If 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 5y ago
      HN likes to think it is better than reddit, but boy oh boy you better not talk about vegetarianism or wealth taxes.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
antihero 5y ago
There'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 5y ago
  The 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 5y 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 5y ago
  I think it's more accurate to say "If everyone optimizes for immediate enjoyment all the time, we all starve."
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    And if everybody optimizes for capital markets all the time, people die without living.
    - mbg721 5y ago
      For 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 5y ago
Prices are a function of supply and demand, not the cost of labor.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  But if the equilibrium is below the cost of production, no one will bother producing.

Barrin92 5y ago

if 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 5y ago
Big 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 5y ago
  There'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 5y 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 5y ago

jl2718 5y ago

I think the bigger problem is that the work environment has turned into political hell.

rednerrus 5y ago

You’d have to pay a ton of money to get people to give up free time with their friends having fun.

BurningFrog 5y 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 5y 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 5y ago
The 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 5y ago
  I 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 5y ago

So 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?