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Would it really be so bad if some people stopped working altogether? One of the proposed justifications for UBI is that automation creates wealth that could (o

Would it really be so bad if some people stopped working altogether? One of the proposed justifications for UBI is that automation creates wealth that could (or in some arguments, should) go to everyone rather than the ultra wealthy. That automation is taking up a larger and larger slice of the workforce, reducing the need for people to work. Many people will choose to do work that gives them meaning. Some people will do unpleasant jobs because since they can’t be automated, they pay well. And some won’t work at all. Is it so bad if there is an entire class of people who just don’t work?

missedthecue 5y ago
Fewer people working reduces the size of the pie, making ourselves poorer. So yes. I would say it's a bad thing if we tax society in order to pay able bodied people not to be productive.
- teucris 5y ago
  But the systems I’m referring to do not suggest taxing the hard work of people. They propose taxing the work of automation.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    Why would we want to create tax policy that discourages automation investment in favor of human labor?
    - jjk166 5y ago
      So you are opposed to people not working, and you're opposed to people working?
      - missedthecue 5y ago
        I'm opposed to paying people not to work. Humans and automation coexist. It's not as if all the engineers that used slide-rules and graphing paper went homeless when AutoCAD was invented. Same with farmers and the tractor. Society gets richer as automation makes our labor more efficient.
        convolvatron 5y ago
        and why do you assume that somehow in this equation there will be enough jobs with a living wage to accomidate the entire population?
        missedthecue 5y ago
        because across 250 years of extreme and rapid industrial progress, wages have gone nowhere but up, across all quintiles.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        teucris 5y ago
        …until ~40 years ago[0] 0: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/wage-stagnation-in-america/amp https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/wage-stagna...
        missedthecue 5y ago
        1. Thats very american-centric 2. Even in America, the trend of inflation adjusted wages has gone up and up https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
        convolvatron 5y ago
        thats the median for all workers
        jjk166 5y ago
        I'm an automation engineer. Automation and labor are at odds. Yeah, automation doesn't completely eliminate jobs, but it takes a lot fewer people to do those jobs. As per your example with farmers and the tractor, agriculture went from employing 90% of people to <2%, most of whom are doing tasks which are generally resistant to automation. You do not find humans guiding horse-drawn plows right alongside the tractors, both coexisting in harmony; the horse population plummeted as they were rendered obsolete and the humans have moved onto other things. The main impediment to automation is the ready availability of cheap labor. Automation requires large upfront investments and lots of technical skill on the part of management. A highschool dropout has no upfront cost and responds to voice commands. I can say from personal experience, even when automation will easily pay for itself in a few months, there is generally still huge resistance to making that investment. Throughout history you will find that many civilizations such as Rome or China had the opportunity to industrialize but didn't because labor was abundant. It is when there is a shortage of labor, such as after the black death, that moneyed interests are forced to invest in making their assets more productive. By paying people not to work (or more accurately not to work the undesirable jobs which ought to be automated) you get the same incentive to automate that a massive plague would induce, but without the tens of millions dead.
    - nouveaux 5y ago
      On one hand, you say that fewer people working reduces the pie. On the other hand, you say we should encourage automation. What situation would enable full automation and enable 100% workforce participation?
      - missedthecue 5y ago
        I'm not a luddite. I think that automation is good, but I don't think that it makes humans permanently redundant. The human skill set is too diverse. Automation should be encouraged, not taxed, because it makes society wealthier and more productive.
        nouveaux 5y ago
        "I think that automation is good, but I don't think that it makes humans permanently redundant." Technology has already made people permanently redundant in many places and will continue to do so. There is a near zero percent chance that technology will stop advancing to replace people's jobs. As we march forward with new automation, there will be a net loss in jobs. UBI is an attempt to solve that problem.
        missedthecue 5y ago
        Can you give me one such example of someone made permanently redundant by automation?
        teucris 5y ago
        Examples of permanent redundancy are tricky to see, because even when people don’t really do a job anymore at a large scale, there are still humans involved, just way, way fewer. Examples are: Computers - not microprocessors but “computers” which were people who did the work of calculating stuff before calculators were invented. Lumberjacks - we have logging equipment now. Musicians - we have DJs and radio to provide us music.
        5y ago
    - rocqua 5y ago
      Because the benefits of automation are highly capital intensive, concentrating wealth in ways that are bad. Taxing this make the benefits for those with capital less, but it probably still means automation is a great investment. This tax just prices in the negative externalities of job-loss into automation. Job-loss really is a drag on an economy (you need consumers to keep an economy going). Moreover job-loss causes poverty, and poverty is bad in and of itself. UBI should make poverty less bad. Funding that partially by automation makes sense if that automation is partially the cause of the poverty (through job loss).
oneoff786 5y ago
Yes. Because the people most likely to quit are the people at the bottom. We need a lot of bottom tier workers to run society. See how much stuff falls apart right now with the labor shortage.
- nouveaux 5y ago
  GP is framing his argument based on a world where the lower tier jobs do not exist through automation. So the assumption is that bottom tier work will be replaced by automation, and society will continue to run.
  - teucris 5y ago
    Automation, or the pay is really good because it’s bottom tier (implying unpleasant) and can’t be automated (yet).
  - oneoff786 5y ago
    Not a particularly realistic view of automation. Real automation is productivity tooling that turns semi skilled labor into unskilled labor, at vastly fewer heads. Most tasks have some last mile task that still requires someone with a pulse to be there. Like store clerks used to be fairly high skill jobs. If there’s truly no need for lower tier labor we will enter a never before seen economic inflection point, and a race to remove labor costs at every point in the system, because you’ve implicitly suggested we have achieved generally intelligent, physically present ai

missedthecue 5y ago

Fewer people working reduces the size of the pie, making ourselves poorer. So yes. I would say it's a bad thing if we tax society in order to pay able bodied people not to be productive.

teucris 5y ago
But the systems I’m referring to do not suggest taxing the hard work of people. They propose taxing the work of automation.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Why would we want to create tax policy that discourages automation investment in favor of human labor?
  - jjk166 5y ago
    So you are opposed to people not working, and you're opposed to people working?
    - missedthecue 5y ago
      I'm opposed to paying people not to work. Humans and automation coexist. It's not as if all the engineers that used slide-rules and graphing paper went homeless when AutoCAD was invented. Same with farmers and the tractor. Society gets richer as automation makes our labor more efficient.
      - convolvatron 5y ago
        and why do you assume that somehow in this equation there will be enough jobs with a living wage to accomidate the entire population?
        missedthecue 5y ago
        because across 250 years of extreme and rapid industrial progress, wages have gone nowhere but up, across all quintiles.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        teucris 5y ago
        …until ~40 years ago[0] 0: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/wage-stagnation-in-america/amp https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/wage-stagna...
        missedthecue 5y ago
        1. Thats very american-centric 2. Even in America, the trend of inflation adjusted wages has gone up and up https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
        convolvatron 5y ago
        thats the median for all workers
      - jjk166 5y ago
        I'm an automation engineer. Automation and labor are at odds. Yeah, automation doesn't completely eliminate jobs, but it takes a lot fewer people to do those jobs. As per your example with farmers and the tractor, agriculture went from employing 90% of people to <2%, most of whom are doing tasks which are generally resistant to automation. You do not find humans guiding horse-drawn plows right alongside the tractors, both coexisting in harmony; the horse population plummeted as they were rendered obsolete and the humans have moved onto other things. The main impediment to automation is the ready availability of cheap labor. Automation requires large upfront investments and lots of technical skill on the part of management. A highschool dropout has no upfront cost and responds to voice commands. I can say from personal experience, even when automation will easily pay for itself in a few months, there is generally still huge resistance to making that investment. Throughout history you will find that many civilizations such as Rome or China had the opportunity to industrialize but didn't because labor was abundant. It is when there is a shortage of labor, such as after the black death, that moneyed interests are forced to invest in making their assets more productive. By paying people not to work (or more accurately not to work the undesirable jobs which ought to be automated) you get the same incentive to automate that a massive plague would induce, but without the tens of millions dead.
  - nouveaux 5y ago
    On one hand, you say that fewer people working reduces the pie. On the other hand, you say we should encourage automation. What situation would enable full automation and enable 100% workforce participation?
    - missedthecue 5y ago
      I'm not a luddite. I think that automation is good, but I don't think that it makes humans permanently redundant. The human skill set is too diverse. Automation should be encouraged, not taxed, because it makes society wealthier and more productive.
      - nouveaux 5y ago
        "I think that automation is good, but I don't think that it makes humans permanently redundant." Technology has already made people permanently redundant in many places and will continue to do so. There is a near zero percent chance that technology will stop advancing to replace people's jobs. As we march forward with new automation, there will be a net loss in jobs. UBI is an attempt to solve that problem.
        missedthecue 5y ago
        Can you give me one such example of someone made permanently redundant by automation?
        teucris 5y ago
        Examples of permanent redundancy are tricky to see, because even when people don’t really do a job anymore at a large scale, there are still humans involved, just way, way fewer. Examples are: Computers - not microprocessors but “computers” which were people who did the work of calculating stuff before calculators were invented. Lumberjacks - we have logging equipment now. Musicians - we have DJs and radio to provide us music.
        5y ago
  - rocqua 5y ago
    Because the benefits of automation are highly capital intensive, concentrating wealth in ways that are bad. Taxing this make the benefits for those with capital less, but it probably still means automation is a great investment. This tax just prices in the negative externalities of job-loss into automation. Job-loss really is a drag on an economy (you need consumers to keep an economy going). Moreover job-loss causes poverty, and poverty is bad in and of itself. UBI should make poverty less bad. Funding that partially by automation makes sense if that automation is partially the cause of the poverty (through job loss).

oneoff786 5y ago

Yes. Because the people most likely to quit are the people at the bottom. We need a lot of bottom tier workers to run society. See how much stuff falls apart right now with the labor shortage.

nouveaux 5y ago
GP is framing his argument based on a world where the lower tier jobs do not exist through automation. So the assumption is that bottom tier work will be replaced by automation, and society will continue to run.
- teucris 5y ago
  Automation, or the pay is really good because it’s bottom tier (implying unpleasant) and can’t be automated (yet).
- oneoff786 5y ago
  Not a particularly realistic view of automation. Real automation is productivity tooling that turns semi skilled labor into unskilled labor, at vastly fewer heads. Most tasks have some last mile task that still requires someone with a pulse to be there. Like store clerks used to be fairly high skill jobs. If there’s truly no need for lower tier labor we will enter a never before seen economic inflection point, and a race to remove labor costs at every point in the system, because you’ve implicitly suggested we have achieved generally intelligent, physically present ai