14 ms·

I’m yet to hear an UBI proponent explain to me how those jobs would get done. The naive go-to answer is ”automation”, but on HN people generally understand how

• api 5y ago
  The most likely outcome is that they would be outsourced to people who don’t know anything other than menial labor. There are better ways such as variable work weeks and gig/day labor for easily acquired menial labor (on top of UBI), but that may be a bigger shift in culture than UBI.
• ScaleneTriangle 5y ago
  Better pay, better working conditions.
• DocTomoe 5y ago
  They would get done by paying them better. And at some point, automation would be cheaper than labour. That being said: Unloading trucks is a solved problem that can be automated with sufficient containerization.
  • ianhawes 5y ago
    > That being said: Unloading trucks is a solved problem that can be automated with sufficient containerization. Go read https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedexers https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedexers and let me know how solved that problem is.
• mupuff1234 5y ago
  I think a lot of people wouldn't mind doing such types of jobs if they only need to do 2-3 shifts a week, in fact, I think a lot of people would enjoy it. I think it's mostly the mix of overworked + low benefits + knowing that you have to do it otherwise you'll have nothing is the deal breaker - not so much the job itself.
  • ericmcer 5y ago
    Yeh this is true, I have done some shit jobs, (grocery, retail, door to door sales) and the 5 days a week with only a few days off a year was what really ground you down. Doing a mindless service job 2 days a week and getting UBI would actually be awesome.
    • logosmonkey 5y ago
      And it's often a random 5 days, maybe 6. You never know. It's hard to overstate how burdensome that is.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • tdfx 5y ago
      Just want to echo that I believe this to be true, as well. Jobs involving menial, unskilled labor can be almost therapeutic if you're only required to do it 2-3 times a week. I did night jobs while I was working full time as a developer and I would actually look forward to the work. Whereas the other employees who did it 5-6 days a week acted like it was torture.
      • bathMarm0t 5y ago
        Don't underestimate the context in which you worked e.g. showing up to the job having your ace-in-the-hole: the Knowledge (capitol K-Knowing in your bones) that you could do better socio-fiscally speaking. A lot of who we are and how we represent ourselves to society is bound up in work for some damnable reason. Feeling trapped in employment (and therefore trapped in your self-worth) is a major vector for anxiety/negative feedback loops.
• pdimitar 5y ago
  You barely looked then. A lot of people, myself included, would still work if they receive UBI. We'd just work less, plus it would be liberating and healthy for the mind to know that you can quit anytime without your survival being at stake. Nobody is claiming that the entire humanity will stop working under an UBI system.
  • michaelt 5y ago
    > A lot of people, myself included, would still work Is your current job cleaning gas station toilets at 5am? Because if not, you haven't responded to the posts you're replying to.
    • pdimitar 5y ago
      No. I have no problem cleaning mine however, or volunteering to clean up parks. Your point?
      • nsonha 5y ago
        Their point is the people currently working and sustains working such a terrible job will simply stop working, if they can secure the same income. The rest of the time maybe they learn to code (which they can fail), or not and they'll just fuck around. People will definite do something for sure. It's just I'm not sure why something has to be some sort of job or anything beneficial to society. There are a lot of people whose jobs are damaging to society actually.
        • pdimitar 5y ago
          Oh, absolutely, I'm not contesting anything that you've said. It's just that I'm fairly sure there will always be people willing to clean toilets for little extra money, especially if they're not abused and kept hostage of a minimum (but lifesaving for them) pay. And those conditions should be impossible in an UBI system.
          • 5y ago
• bombcar 5y ago
  Simple - make UBI not available to immigrants and immigrants will do all the shitwork.
  • profile53 5y ago
    I dislike reading this, but it's unfortunately true and something you already see everywhere in the world when immigrants can't access basic social services and are easier for people to exploit.
  • FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    This is basically how the Gulf States work.
    • bombcar 5y ago
      This could refer to the Persian Gulf or the Gulf States of America, sadly.
      • FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
        I see what you mean about an "illegal" or work-visa underclass, but I'm not seeing the UBI. To be born Kuwaiti confers many privileges unavailable to those merely born Texan!
• indymike 5y ago
  I'm not a UBI proponent, nor am I a fan of exploiting people. There is a truth: some business cannot exist profitably if you have to pay market wages for labor. Reason: we've had a glut in workers for decades. Now the glut is over, and workers are scarce. We're finding out the value of an employee isn't some index number like minimum wage, or "local prevailing wage over the last 18 months", it is what it costs to hire someone today. That number goes up and up. Bottom line: exploitative employers are going to have to change how they do business.
  • nsonha 5y ago
    Instead of UBI the gov can subsidise salary for those businesses.
    • ben_w 5y ago
      Subsidised salaries do not create new workers, they (create an incentive to) move workers from non-subsidised jobs. It is effectively the non-subsidised workers whose taxes pay for the subsidies. That kind of thing is best kept for where markets don’t accurately price externalities, not ”$foo businesses can’t find staff at a price they are happy with”.
      • rdtwo 5y ago
        Nursing and teaching would be a good place for subsidized wages
        • ben_w 5y ago
          I don’t know what things are like where you are, but in the U.K. both of those are[0] public sector jobs. That makes them[0] 100% “subsidised”, though I can’t help but feel there’s a better word for it in this case. [0] mostly
          • nsonha 5y ago
            wow, I don't even believe 100% of the tax dollars spent on education would be justified, but I'll still prefer such a system.
• dagw 5y ago
  Immigration. Make UBI only for citizens (and possibly permanent residents), and you'll have a large workforce who don't qualify for UBI and will have to take those jobs. Add a possible path to citizenship and you'll have people lining up at border to do all those jobs. For the record, not a UBI proponent, nor do I think this is a good solution. It is however most likely solution, and how countries like Qatar have solved the problem.
  • bullfightonmars 5y ago
    That sounds like the worst of both worlds! A codified two tier underclass. With one part in an unemplyed malaise, angry at having no purpose, and blind to the benefits they recieve. The other part an exploited class with no rights or benefits.
    • kube-system 5y ago
      That situation you describe is already the status quo today in the US, just replace “UBI” with “SSN”.
      • rmah 5y ago
        Just as an FYI, all permanent residents in the USA can get a SSN. You don't need to be a citizen.
        • kube-system 5y ago
          I understand, however there is a significant population of people without one.
    • nobodyandproud 5y ago
      It would only work, if the penalty for employing the illegal-to-hire were severe enough. As others have pointed out already, this is already true today: We use undocumented-workers, recent immigrants who don’t know better, and prison labor. Recently, prison labor use has been on the rise.
• nsonha 5y ago
  People's jobs aren't just sources of income, it can be their dignity. I don't have an answer to how to create non bullshit jobs since those are rarer these days, but highly repetitive jobs don't sound like they can give you dignity or meaning in your work.
  • anonfornoreason 5y ago
    I loaded trucks earlier in life for a few years and loved it. Shit pay, hard work, good camaraderie, very satisfying end result. Would I want to do it for a career? No way. Did I learn a ton about the pleasures of hard work and a good team? Absolutely. I’d actually directly attribute that job and a couple others as the foundation for what it took to build a business of my own. So many of the comments in this thread are so absolutely horrifying to me. Bunch of spoiled people thinking there isn’t a space for entry level jobs, like they’ve never held one themselves. That being said, would I have jumped on the unemployment train back then if it got bumped up due to a pandemic? Definitely. Do I think people should advocate for living wages? Absolutely. Twenty years ago when I had my last entry level job, cost of living was half what it is now, but pay has only gone up by 50%. There are real issues, but they aren’t due to jobs being “demeaning”, they are with wages not keeping up with inflation.
    • lordlic 5y ago
      I've held one myself, and what I think is "absolutely horrifying" is your moralistic justifications for worker exploitation as being simply bestowing "the pleasures of hard work" and "the foundation for what it took to build a business of your own." Your hustle-culture narrative is appallingly toxic and your entire argument amounts to learning to love being treated like garbage so that you don't feel bad when you do it to others once you're the one on top.
      • anonfornoreason 5y ago
        Definitely was not treated like garbage. Obviously not all entry level jobs treat people well (or even fancy jobs, ever read a comment thread on being a software dev for Amazon?), but just because jobs are low pay does not mean they are exploited. Seriously, do you expect six weeks of paid vacation and 30 bucks an hour for running a till at an ice cream shop? I can see maybe 18 an hour at an ice cream shop, but even at that price I’d be shocked if you don’t lose business due to a cone costing 5 bucks instead of 4. Maybe this conversation would be helped by understanding what you define “exploited” and “treated like garbage” to be, and some examples of how that is happening. I feel we must be talking past eachother, because it’s hard to understand how there’s a valid argument for non skilled labor to command a high salary. Again for reference I believe that wages haven’t kept up with inflation and that a minimum wage of around 18 or so an hour would be appropriate given the cost of living increases we’ve seen in the last 12 months.
• eliaspro 5y ago
  That's IMHO one of the fundamental ideas behind a UBI: have market forces work this out by disarming the currently skewed employer/employee power relation through a UBI where no one would be forced to take on the most-demeaning jobs just to survive. Right now a lot of the costs of such jobs are simply externalized to exploited employees - a UBI would cause the wages in those to rise to more fair levels.
• bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Status and hierarchy are a great motivator for humans. UBI will feed and house you, but if you want a car or the latest iPhone, you'll need a job. And playing the mating game is a lot easier if you have the appropriate status symbols, fancy clothes, et cetera.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    Those motivators aren't the ones that disappeared in the last 18 months, though.
    • Jensson 5y ago
      Society seems to work just fine even when those people aren't working though. Are those jobs really that important if you don't notice when they aren't done? If they were super important you'd see wages go up until they get done.
      • josephcsible 5y ago
        > if you don't notice when they aren't done But I have experienced effects of the labor shortage firsthand, e.g., getting somewhere only to see a "closed today due to lack of staffing" sign on the door.
• s17n 5y ago
  Shitty jobs will have to get better, probably. This may mean that areas of the economy that depended on cheap mistreated labor shrink (eg the price of berries will go up), but that would be a good thing, morally.
• varelse 5y ago
  Why they will get done when they are priced sufficiently above doing nothing silly. And that in turn will spur development of automation instead of Bezos like corner cutting across our entire society. Now if those low wage to minimum wage gigs came with solid health insurance and a social safety net I might have a colder heart here but honestly I'm glad they're finally figuring out just how rigged the game has been against them all along. To be fair, by worshiping the affluent and hoping that one day they will be among them when they almost certainly will never be, they played their part in enabling the system that holds them down, but it seems we're moving to the next chapter here at last.
• MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  iPhones, vacation money, nicer clothes, money to go out and do things, etc. When everything is locked down, what's the point of looking nice in fancy clothes that nobody can see you wear?
• ziml77 5y ago
  For decades people have fought hard against automation or against certain industries shutting down (e.g. coal miners fighting against renewable energy pushes). People are afraid not just about losing their current job but also of the total number of available jobs falling. UBI is a potential solution to this issue. People won't fight those kinds of changes if they know they'll still be able to survive perfectly well.
  • dantheman 5y ago
    UBI can't work - the math doesn't work. The pandemic trillions weren't paid for, and that's not enough for UBI.
• Jochim 5y ago
  You'd have to start treating them like people.
• maxerickson 5y ago
  Most unskilled labor was mechanized 100 years ago.
• baby 5y ago
  Automation and raising wages.
• heavyset_go 5y ago
  You want more money than UBI offers? You get a job on top of it.
• dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I’m yet to hear an UBI proponent explain to me how those jobs would get done The people that need them done would offer sufficient pay to induce people to do them [0]. If the need isn’t sufficient to offer enough to do that in the presence of a sustainable (non-hyperinflationary) UBI, then the job doesn't need done and the fact that it is happening now is just a demonstration of the exploitative nature of the current economy (which includes features like time limits and behavior testing that mean that not everyone means-qualified gets means-tested support.) [0] which UBI makes easier, at the same maximum benefit level, than traditional means-tested welfare, by not cutting benefits rapidly with outside income.
• lordlic 5y ago
  If the jobs really need to get done, then the working conditions and wages offered will improve until someone's incentivized to do them. Usually people's objection to this is "but this will raise the prices of consumer goods!" And the answer is yes, yes it will. Better-off people used to cheap goods/services will no longer be able to fuel their consumption on the backs of people getting paid very little for work under dehumanizing conditions, and will end up with a net loss. Lower-class workers will see their incomes increase much more on a proportional basis and end up with a net benefit. On a more meta note, this is an incredibly common and obvious answer to your question, and I wonder if it's even asked in good faith. If you've "yet to hear an UBI proponent explain" this to you then you really don't understand it at all.
  • jbboehr 5y ago
    > Lower-class workers will see their incomes increase much more on a proportional basis and end up with a net benefit. Except their goods are going to cost more too now. Unless you're going to start proposing price controls. I can't really see UBI doing anything except inflating itself away.
    • lordlic 5y ago
      Their goods will cost more, but they'll also have more income, both from employers paying more for labor and from the direct payments from UBI. And even if the benefits are entirely "inflated away" in aggregate (which is extremely dubious given that UBI produces real economic value in terms of stability), that's just the aggregate effect. To take an extreme example, if the Fed prints 1,000,000 exadollars and distributes them equally, then yeah it's pure inflation, but it also massively redistributes wealth to the point where everyone is practically identical. Hopefully that example demonstrates that the effect isn't zero even if it's just "inflating itself away." Finally, I object to treating this question in pure economic terms. We shouldn't be overly concerned with optimizing aggregate economic outcomes for society. Those at the top end can more than afford to give up some wealth, and those at the bottom are struggling to a heartbreaking degree. The utility function of holding wealth is not linear and if you're interested in increasing everyone's well-being then that's a fact you have to address.
• Ekaros 5y ago
  UBI would be on level where you get your room, clothes, basic healthcare and food. Want to get new fancy Samsung instead of basic model. Better go to clean bathrooms for a few days or weeks.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    The problem is too many people are happy to stay with the basics forever if it means they never have to work again.
    • soared 5y ago
      This is the core disagreement of ubi v. Anti-ubi people. Also a common disagreement right now over unemployment, covid payments, disability payments, etc.
      • josephcsible 5y ago
        I was pro-UBI until last year. The labor shortage we're in now is what changed my position on it.
      • DoreenMichele 5y ago
        I don't think either group is a monolith. As one data point, I am anti UBI for a completely different reason.
        • josephcsible 5y ago
          Out of curiosity, what's your reason?
          • DoreenMichele 5y ago
            Stated as a single reason: I don't think it works.
    • imtringued 5y ago
• Glyptodon 5y ago
  Pay more, design to minimize them, etc. If society can't function because nobody will work for $5/hr to clean up after people trashing public restrooms, or to get heat stroke doing who know what in 100F+ heat, society should change.
• throw123123123 5y ago
  They would get done - at a higher price. The more aid you give to the lowest end workers, the more you need to pay them to do that work at all.
• aaomidi 5y ago
  Here's a non UBI/anarchist/no state explanation: If something needs to be done and no one does it, then 1. Does it ACTUALLY need to be done? 2. The society starts just start splitting the work and doing it together. This is strength of mini-governance. You're doing it because you care about the community and EVERYONE is responsible for it. Not a class system.