7 ms·

Those who work and thereby pay for the UBI may feel that freeriding is actually unjust, and not the hallmark of a glorious new post-scarcity society?

by jacobn 5y ago

pc86 5y ago
I'm sure some will. Some won't. So what? I'm not trying to be dismissive, but this strikes me as a "but some people will be upset!" argument, which seems irrelevant to whether the policy achieves its stated goals or not.
- respondo2134 5y ago
  then why are so many UBI proponents surprised when those who would bankroll this experiement fight it so hard?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in. And for the record, I would appear to be in the group bankrolling it rather than receiving from it, and I'm completely cool with it.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      I don't think that's the mindset. The mindset is, "I worked for what I have, you can do the same"
      - seba_dos1 5y ago
        People with that mindset usually greatly overestimate the influence their work has on what they have and underestimate external factors, so pushing them to reevaluate may be a good thing.
        tekknik 5y ago
        So, people that worked and earned what they have and are compensated accordingly don’t deserve it?
        seba_dos1 5y ago
        Do such people even exist? Being a programmer, what I earned is a result of several factors - most importantly investments made into me by my parents and by the society (with schools, infrastructure etc. mostly funded with taxes); and also plenty of pure luck and sheer coincidence. Only afterwards comes a lot of hard work I've put into learning what I know. Without the former, I would probably earn only a small fraction of that (and/or under much worse conditions) even assuming that I'd be putting the same amount of hard work. Alternatively, with more dumb luck I could be earning much more while putting less work into achieving that. Of course, this is just barely scratching the surface, as there are also other ways to get rich than working hard or being lucky; mere ability to invest your time and effort into "working hard" is often filled with external factors as well; and "being (un)lucky" itself contains so many factors to consider that I wouldn't even know where to start.
        tekknik 5y ago
        > Do such people even exist? You’re talking to one. I have no degree, am self taught and a software engineer. The most help I got was reading open source code, which was pretty difficult to do when I started. My parents had no money for school for me, and I joined the military to try to get some education. That still wasn’t enough to actually get a degree so I had to work low paying jobs knowing I could do better while working side projects to improve my skill. I just recently caught up to what I should be making. It’s common for those that took the standard path to think nobody works for what they got.
        seba_dos1 5y ago
        I'm not. You were able to read open source code and learn from it, taking advantage of a lot of effort its authors put into it (who knows, maybe you even stumbled on some of my work out there?). You had access to computers and to the Internet, and had time to use it, most likely thanks to your parents, which isn't a given. You admitted yourself that you turned into publicly funded military for it to invest into your education. You also had ability to do side projects while working a low paying job, instead of, say, taking care of an ill relative your whole spare time - not everyone is so lucky. And perhaps most importantly of it all, you turned your attention into software engineering during time when software engineering is extremely lucrative - it doesn't have to stay this way at all. I don't even have a degree, by the way; I'm mostly self-taught too.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - yes_really 5y ago
      It's not "I got mine, fuck you". It's "I got mine. You got yours. Now you want to take mine, fuck you".
    - tekknik 5y ago
      > It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in. What it too to get mine, required very hard work and literally signing my life away for 4 years. Then, when I started gaining, I got fined for not having health insurance. Now that I can comfortably afford my health insurance and am starting to look at buying a house, here’s the left again saying I should help others, when I received no such help, and taking away the money I worked hard to earn. Imagine not having a degree in the software engineering field. The struggle is real, and if I can do it then what are others excuses? No, I’m sorry, I will fight to force others to follow my path (albeit in a different field should they choose). I will not willingly pay for others to have an easy life unless they are related to me.
      - seba_dos1 5y ago
        I never understood how twisted someone's mind has to be in order to say "I suffered, so I'll fight to make others suffer too".
        tekknik 5y ago
        I’ve never understood why people are so willing to give up what they’ve earned for people who are not trying that just have their hand out. Why do we do it this way, those that want to help can pay the UBI tax and receive the payments. The rest of us that don’t want it can never receive it but also don’t have to pay. Why don’t we do that instead? Also I’m a Navy veteran. I can’t tell you how many times I can back from deployment to see actual hatred from these people I had never met, who I was defending their freedom for. The idea of helping others is gone after 1) I already did by defending their freedom and 2) most people here are assholes only thinking of themselves, so i joined them.
    - caskstrength 5y ago
      > It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in. I haven't "got mine" yet and tend to disagree when people propose to lock me out of upper-middle class lifestyle by taxing the hell out of my income. It is more like people like you who "got theirs" want to pull the ladder up.
- roamerz 5y ago
  So what? Sounds like you should be part or a dictatorship rather than a democracy. If you support this idea then feel free to donate to the cause. Not trying to be an ass but the so what attitude does not tend to further constructive discussion.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > Sounds like you should be part or a dictatorship rather than a democracy. What a weird claim. Decisions in democracies upset some people too. That's the whole point of voting on things, to resolve conflicts. > If you support this idea then feel free to donate to the cause. Donate to what? > Not trying to be an ass but the so what attitude does not tend to further constructive discussion. "Some people will complain" isn't constructive by itself either.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      > That's the whole point of voting on things, to resolve conflicts. It doesn’t resolve the conflict, one side is just forced to accept something they don’t want. The hatred, and therefore the division, builds regardless.
  - pc86 5y ago
    I would love to know what democracy you live in where nobody is ever upset by democratic decisions.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Would those people have extra means to influence political laws to be more in their favor?
edmcnulty101 5y ago
Most of the productivity gains go to the top percentage of people. Despite massive gdp increases in 20 years wages havent budged. If all the work was automated/outsourced those people would still make the same money. These are the people who ostensibly will pay for UBI and automation/outsources is one of the cases for UBI.
- qwytw 5y ago
  If we take out the period between around 2000 and 2010 they have been growing continuously since 1980 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Real_Median_Personal_Income_in_the_United_States.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...) of course it's not at the same rate as GDP (5x vs 1.5x for personal income).
  - edmcnulty101 5y ago
    It's kept up with inflation. But that's about it. Which means real wage growth is minimal.
sidibe 5y ago
It's their choice to work. Might take a generation or two to not be outraged based on how we were raised, but that would seem to make it not unjust.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Depends. If a minority of voters are dependent on the UBI and a majority decides that they do not like the system, or a politician persuades them so, they will vote against it. ("Working your ass off on lazy strangers" is a huge boon for populist politicians.) If a majority of voters depends on the UBI and a minority is compelled to provide it to them, they basically have no recourse but to emigrate. At which point you lose their tax money, unless you impose draconic measures on emigration.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I don't see why they shouldn't be free to. Yet, weirdly, we don't see a lot of people renouncing their rich-socialist-nation citizenship to run off to some other libertarian paradise.
    - nec4b 5y ago
      >> rich-socialist-nation Which nation is that?
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        All of the ones providing single payer healthcare, if you need a more precise target.
        nec4b 5y ago
        Could you be more specific? Single payer healthcare does not make a country socialistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
tamaharbor 5y ago
When did hard work (or any work for that matter) to move up the skills/pay ladder become obsolete?
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
As more jobs become automated, UBI will become a necessity to prevent the collapse of civilization. Imagine something as simple as burger flipping became completely automated. There would be a million fast food workers suddenly unemployed. Add making espresso to the mix and half a million baristas lose their job. There won't be a million new jobs created to maintain the automation to pick up the slack.
- mongol 5y ago
  Go back all the way back to the industrial revolution and you will find that automation creates new jobs, just other kinds.
  - qwytw 5y ago
    The industrial revolution replaced a smaller number of high (kind of) skilled jobs with a large number of low skilled jobs. This time it seems that it's the other way around.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      > The industrial revolution replaced a smaller number of high (kind of) skilled jobs with a large number of low skilled jobs. No, it replaced large number of medium and low skilled jobs too. Before industrial revolution, more labor hours were spent on working distaff and spindle than probably any other single job. Industrial revolution reduced number of spinning jobs to roughly zero. The same happened to many other low skilled jobs, like weaving, mining, digging, and many more.
      - qwytw 5y ago
        Yes you're right, now that I read it doesn't make sense.. I guess what I wanted to say is that is that at least initially it replaced a huge number of medium paying jobs with a large number of low paying and a small number of extremely well paying jobs. Due to the massively the increased efficiency the industrial revolution created many many of them low skilled new jobs which couldn't have existed earlier. An average person in the 19th century probably consumed significantly more textile and other manufactured products than someone in the prior centuries. However in the beginning this increase in efficiency led to large decrease in incomes due to the surplus in labour and in part because efficiency increases in agriculture were trailing behind other areas. E.g. an unskilled worker in the UK could only purchase about 60% of the amount of bread in ~1800 compared to what he could in 1750 (real earnings only started to grow significantly between 1850 and 1875. Modern automation on the other hand seems to mostly just replaced many low and medium paying jobs with a smaller number of high paying ones.

Those who work and thereby pay for the UBI may feel that freeriding is actually unjust, and not the hallmark of a glorious new post-scarcity society?

by jacobn 5y ago

Those who work and thereby pay for the UBI may feel that freeriding is actually unjust, and not the hallmark of a glorious new post-scarcity society?

pc86 5y ago

I'm sure some will. Some won't. So what? I'm not trying to be dismissive, but this strikes me as a "but some people will be upset!" argument, which seems irrelevant to whether the policy achieves its stated goals or not.

respondo2134 5y ago
then why are so many UBI proponents surprised when those who would bankroll this experiement fight it so hard?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in. And for the record, I would appear to be in the group bankrolling it rather than receiving from it, and I'm completely cool with it.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    I don't think that's the mindset. The mindset is, "I worked for what I have, you can do the same"
    - seba_dos1 5y ago
      People with that mindset usually greatly overestimate the influence their work has on what they have and underestimate external factors, so pushing them to reevaluate may be a good thing.
      - tekknik 5y ago
        So, people that worked and earned what they have and are compensated accordingly don’t deserve it?
        seba_dos1 5y ago
        Do such people even exist? Being a programmer, what I earned is a result of several factors - most importantly investments made into me by my parents and by the society (with schools, infrastructure etc. mostly funded with taxes); and also plenty of pure luck and sheer coincidence. Only afterwards comes a lot of hard work I've put into learning what I know. Without the former, I would probably earn only a small fraction of that (and/or under much worse conditions) even assuming that I'd be putting the same amount of hard work. Alternatively, with more dumb luck I could be earning much more while putting less work into achieving that. Of course, this is just barely scratching the surface, as there are also other ways to get rich than working hard or being lucky; mere ability to invest your time and effort into "working hard" is often filled with external factors as well; and "being (un)lucky" itself contains so many factors to consider that I wouldn't even know where to start.
        tekknik 5y ago
        > Do such people even exist? You’re talking to one. I have no degree, am self taught and a software engineer. The most help I got was reading open source code, which was pretty difficult to do when I started. My parents had no money for school for me, and I joined the military to try to get some education. That still wasn’t enough to actually get a degree so I had to work low paying jobs knowing I could do better while working side projects to improve my skill. I just recently caught up to what I should be making. It’s common for those that took the standard path to think nobody works for what they got.
        seba_dos1 5y ago
        I'm not. You were able to read open source code and learn from it, taking advantage of a lot of effort its authors put into it (who knows, maybe you even stumbled on some of my work out there?). You had access to computers and to the Internet, and had time to use it, most likely thanks to your parents, which isn't a given. You admitted yourself that you turned into publicly funded military for it to invest into your education. You also had ability to do side projects while working a low paying job, instead of, say, taking care of an ill relative your whole spare time - not everyone is so lucky. And perhaps most importantly of it all, you turned your attention into software engineering during time when software engineering is extremely lucrative - it doesn't have to stay this way at all. I don't even have a degree, by the way; I'm mostly self-taught too.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - yes_really 5y ago
    It's not "I got mine, fuck you". It's "I got mine. You got yours. Now you want to take mine, fuck you".
  - tekknik 5y ago
    > It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in. What it too to get mine, required very hard work and literally signing my life away for 4 years. Then, when I started gaining, I got fined for not having health insurance. Now that I can comfortably afford my health insurance and am starting to look at buying a house, here’s the left again saying I should help others, when I received no such help, and taking away the money I worked hard to earn. Imagine not having a degree in the software engineering field. The struggle is real, and if I can do it then what are others excuses? No, I’m sorry, I will fight to force others to follow my path (albeit in a different field should they choose). I will not willingly pay for others to have an easy life unless they are related to me.
    - seba_dos1 5y ago
      I never understood how twisted someone's mind has to be in order to say "I suffered, so I'll fight to make others suffer too".
      - tekknik 5y ago
        I’ve never understood why people are so willing to give up what they’ve earned for people who are not trying that just have their hand out. Why do we do it this way, those that want to help can pay the UBI tax and receive the payments. The rest of us that don’t want it can never receive it but also don’t have to pay. Why don’t we do that instead? Also I’m a Navy veteran. I can’t tell you how many times I can back from deployment to see actual hatred from these people I had never met, who I was defending their freedom for. The idea of helping others is gone after 1) I already did by defending their freedom and 2) most people here are assholes only thinking of themselves, so i joined them.
  - caskstrength 5y ago
    > It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in. I haven't "got mine" yet and tend to disagree when people propose to lock me out of upper-middle class lifestyle by taxing the hell out of my income. It is more like people like you who "got theirs" want to pull the ladder up.
roamerz 5y ago
So what? Sounds like you should be part or a dictatorship rather than a democracy. If you support this idea then feel free to donate to the cause. Not trying to be an ass but the so what attitude does not tend to further constructive discussion.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > Sounds like you should be part or a dictatorship rather than a democracy. What a weird claim. Decisions in democracies upset some people too. That's the whole point of voting on things, to resolve conflicts. > If you support this idea then feel free to donate to the cause. Donate to what? > Not trying to be an ass but the so what attitude does not tend to further constructive discussion. "Some people will complain" isn't constructive by itself either.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    > That's the whole point of voting on things, to resolve conflicts. It doesn’t resolve the conflict, one side is just forced to accept something they don’t want. The hatred, and therefore the division, builds regardless.
- pc86 5y ago
  I would love to know what democracy you live in where nobody is ever upset by democratic decisions.
ipaddr 5y ago
Would those people have extra means to influence political laws to be more in their favor?

edmcnulty101 5y ago

Most of the productivity gains go to the top percentage of people. Despite massive gdp increases in 20 years wages havent budged. If all the work was automated/outsourced those people would still make the same money. These are the people who ostensibly will pay for UBI and automation/outsources is one of the cases for UBI.

qwytw 5y ago
If we take out the period between around 2000 and 2010 they have been growing continuously since 1980 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Real_Median_Personal_Income_in_the_United_States.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...) of course it's not at the same rate as GDP (5x vs 1.5x for personal income).
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  It's kept up with inflation. But that's about it. Which means real wage growth is minimal.

sidibe 5y ago

It's their choice to work. Might take a generation or two to not be outraged based on how we were raised, but that would seem to make it not unjust.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Depends. If a minority of voters are dependent on the UBI and a majority decides that they do not like the system, or a politician persuades them so, they will vote against it. ("Working your ass off on lazy strangers" is a huge boon for populist politicians.) If a majority of voters depends on the UBI and a minority is compelled to provide it to them, they basically have no recourse but to emigrate. At which point you lose their tax money, unless you impose draconic measures on emigration.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I don't see why they shouldn't be free to. Yet, weirdly, we don't see a lot of people renouncing their rich-socialist-nation citizenship to run off to some other libertarian paradise.
  - nec4b 5y ago
    >> rich-socialist-nation Which nation is that?
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      All of the ones providing single payer healthcare, if you need a more precise target.
      - nec4b 5y ago
        Could you be more specific? Single payer healthcare does not make a country socialistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

tamaharbor 5y ago

When did hard work (or any work for that matter) to move up the skills/pay ladder become obsolete?

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

As more jobs become automated, UBI will become a necessity to prevent the collapse of civilization. Imagine something as simple as burger flipping became completely automated. There would be a million fast food workers suddenly unemployed. Add making espresso to the mix and half a million baristas lose their job. There won't be a million new jobs created to maintain the automation to pick up the slack.

mongol 5y ago
Go back all the way back to the industrial revolution and you will find that automation creates new jobs, just other kinds.
- qwytw 5y ago
  The industrial revolution replaced a smaller number of high (kind of) skilled jobs with a large number of low skilled jobs. This time it seems that it's the other way around.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    > The industrial revolution replaced a smaller number of high (kind of) skilled jobs with a large number of low skilled jobs. No, it replaced large number of medium and low skilled jobs too. Before industrial revolution, more labor hours were spent on working distaff and spindle than probably any other single job. Industrial revolution reduced number of spinning jobs to roughly zero. The same happened to many other low skilled jobs, like weaving, mining, digging, and many more.
    - qwytw 5y ago
      Yes you're right, now that I read it doesn't make sense.. I guess what I wanted to say is that is that at least initially it replaced a huge number of medium paying jobs with a large number of low paying and a small number of extremely well paying jobs. Due to the massively the increased efficiency the industrial revolution created many many of them low skilled new jobs which couldn't have existed earlier. An average person in the 19th century probably consumed significantly more textile and other manufactured products than someone in the prior centuries. However in the beginning this increase in efficiency led to large decrease in incomes due to the surplus in labour and in part because efficiency increases in agriculture were trailing behind other areas. E.g. an unskilled worker in the UK could only purchase about 60% of the amount of bread in ~1800 compared to what he could in 1750 (real earnings only started to grow significantly between 1850 and 1875. Modern automation on the other hand seems to mostly just replaced many low and medium paying jobs with a smaller number of high paying ones.