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> We need people to do low level jobs. So if UBI exists, wages will need to rise until people are willing to do them. Andrew Yang's premise is that those low l

> We need people to do low level jobs. So if UBI exists, wages will need to rise until people are willing to do them. Andrew Yang's premise is that those low level jobs are increasingly being automated away anyway - meaning that no, we don't need people to do them. Even without that premise, this argument presupposes that people receiving UBI will do so in exclusion to working. That doesn't really logically or practically follow; it's just as possible that people will work anyway because extra spending money is extra spending money. They'll work because they want to work, not because they're being actively coerced to work. > This will happen along with price raises until an equilibrium is found where poor people need to work in order to survive. With Yang's proposal, the "price raises" part is probably true, yes. However, that has nothing to do with UBI; instead, it has to do with VAT. VAT advocates oft insist that it's somehow "not a sales tax" and therefore "totally not regressive like a sales tax", but at the end of the day consumers are paying more than they otherwise would for goods - and since consumer spending is disproportionately higher (relative to income/wealth) for the working class than the ownership class (or low/middle v. high, if that's the terminology you prefer), that's going to have the same regressive tax effects. However, a VAT ain't the only way... > No need for narratives about landlords raising rent, though it is possible. Not if the UBI is instead funded by taxing the unimproved value of land - a.k.a. a land value tax, or LVT. We Georgists tend to call that a "citizen's dividend", but it's just a special case of UBI: a basic income intended to compensate citizens for occupying less than their equal share of land value within a given jurisdiction. There are a lot of implications of this (I could go on and on about the economic efficiency and ethical justifications), but relevant to this conversation is that the lack of deadweight loss means replacing other taxes with LVT would if anything reduce the consumer-facing cost of goods by reducing the effective tax burden of those producing said goods. > Anything that is outsourceable is now more appealing to outsource than before. That has already happened, without UBI. UBI is if anything necessary because of outsourcing - again, because we don't need local people doing those particular low level jobs, because they're now being done overseas. UBI also might even help correct outsourcing; it's a lot easier to start a business if you know that if it fails (like most businesses do) you won't be homeless and starving as a result, and that's exactly the sort of safety net that UBI enables.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
> Andrew Yang's premise is that those low level jobs are increasingly being automated away anyway - meaning that no, we don't need people to do them. Well Andrew Yang is wrong. That's not what automation does. Automation reduces the amount of skill required to do jobs, reducing both the amount, but also the value. You still need people, and often more people because it becomes economical to employ poor people at a higher scale. > Not if the UBI is instead funded by taxing the unimproved value of land - a.k.a. a land value tax, or LVT. A land value tax is a great idea, but irrelevant to what I was saying. We need people to do low wage jobs. If they get some wages for free, we need to pay them more to do the jobs. If we pay them more, then we need to raise prices on the goods in order to not go bankrupt. The natural level of wages/prices is the one where people need to work in order to survive. The tax system and funding of the UBI is a separate problem. > That has already happened, without UBI. UBI is if anything necessary because of outsourcing - again, because we don't need local people doing those particular low level jobs, because they're now being done overseas. Economic Comparative and Absolute Advantages are not binary events. Doing things that make domestic businesses less competitive across the board in a globalized international economy is suicidal. > UBI also might even help correct outsourcing; it's a lot easier to start a business if you know that if it fails (like most businesses do) you won't be homeless and starving as a result, and that's exactly the sort of safety net that UBI enables. It's just a naive thing to focus on this founder idea.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > Automation reduces the amount of skill required to do jobs, reducing both the amount, but also the value. Which translates to one worker being able to produce the same output as what required multiple workers previously. And sure, you could hire three entry-level workers at $15/hour for the price of one specialist at $45/hour, but chances are high that the same automation that enables those workers to do the specialist's job at all also enables said specialist to do considerably more than merely triple one's output. Even ignoring the above, automation doesn't cause demand to materialize out of thin air; if you're a widget manufacturer and your sales team is able to sell 10,000 widgets a day, then multiplying the daily output of each widget factory worker from 10/day to 100/day will necessitate one of four things: 1. Figuring out how to multiply customer demand at the current widget price 2. Slashing widget prices 3. Slashing factory headcount 4. Slashing factory wages 1, 3, and 4 all minimize COGS and thus maximize profit margins. Unfortunately, 3 and 4 are both much easier than 1 (since 1 typically entails considerable effort to execute), so those are the options most companies pick. Both represent a severe loss of worker income - and thus, both necessitate UBI to compensate. > A land value tax is a great idea, but irrelevant to what I was saying. Assessing where the tax burden lies - and the impacts on that tax burden on spending ability, and the impacts of that on demanded wages - is pretty darn relevant to what you're saying. If you're paying an extra 10% (or whatever) on everything you buy, then you're going to adjust your wage expectations accordingly. > We need people to do low wage jobs. If they get some wages for free, we need to pay them more to do the jobs. Good. We should be paying workers a lot more than they're currently getting. The American (and for that matter, global) working class has been chronically shafted under capitalism for centuries now; God forbid we get shafted a little bit less. > If we pay them more, then we need to raise prices on the goods in order to not go bankrupt. Or the management could take a pay cut. I have very little sympathy for the "but what about our profits?" argument when C-level execs of even small businesses are skimming enough money on the output of our labor to be able to afford multi-million dollar homes and fancy cars. > It's just a naive thing to focus on this founder idea. Doesn't seem any more naïve than the idea that workers will somehow manage to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" in a socioeconomic system deliberately designed to ensure we're never able to accumulate enough capital to do so (even at all, let alone without significantly impacting our physical and mental health in the process). Entrepreneurship currently skews hard toward those who already have money. That's a problem which in and of itself needs solved in order for a society to actually have any semblance of that "equality of opportunity" to which "laissez-faire" capitalists pay lip service; that maximizing the ability for working class people to start their own businesses (be it as individuals or cooperatively with others) happens to also at least partially alleviate outsourcing-induced job loss is a nice side benefit.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

> Andrew Yang's premise is that those low level jobs are increasingly being automated away anyway - meaning that no, we don't need people to do them. Well Andrew Yang is wrong. That's not what automation does. Automation reduces the amount of skill required to do jobs, reducing both the amount, but also the value. You still need people, and often more people because it becomes economical to employ poor people at a higher scale. > Not if the UBI is instead funded by taxing the unimproved value of land - a.k.a. a land value tax, or LVT. A land value tax is a great idea, but irrelevant to what I was saying. We need people to do low wage jobs. If they get some wages for free, we need to pay them more to do the jobs. If we pay them more, then we need to raise prices on the goods in order to not go bankrupt. The natural level of wages/prices is the one where people need to work in order to survive. The tax system and funding of the UBI is a separate problem. > That has already happened, without UBI. UBI is if anything necessary because of outsourcing - again, because we don't need local people doing those particular low level jobs, because they're now being done overseas. Economic Comparative and Absolute Advantages are not binary events. Doing things that make domestic businesses less competitive across the board in a globalized international economy is suicidal. > UBI also might even help correct outsourcing; it's a lot easier to start a business if you know that if it fails (like most businesses do) you won't be homeless and starving as a result, and that's exactly the sort of safety net that UBI enables. It's just a naive thing to focus on this founder idea.

yellowapple 4y ago
> Automation reduces the amount of skill required to do jobs, reducing both the amount, but also the value. Which translates to one worker being able to produce the same output as what required multiple workers previously. And sure, you could hire three entry-level workers at $15/hour for the price of one specialist at $45/hour, but chances are high that the same automation that enables those workers to do the specialist's job at all also enables said specialist to do considerably more than merely triple one's output. Even ignoring the above, automation doesn't cause demand to materialize out of thin air; if you're a widget manufacturer and your sales team is able to sell 10,000 widgets a day, then multiplying the daily output of each widget factory worker from 10/day to 100/day will necessitate one of four things: 1. Figuring out how to multiply customer demand at the current widget price 2. Slashing widget prices 3. Slashing factory headcount 4. Slashing factory wages 1, 3, and 4 all minimize COGS and thus maximize profit margins. Unfortunately, 3 and 4 are both much easier than 1 (since 1 typically entails considerable effort to execute), so those are the options most companies pick. Both represent a severe loss of worker income - and thus, both necessitate UBI to compensate. > A land value tax is a great idea, but irrelevant to what I was saying. Assessing where the tax burden lies - and the impacts on that tax burden on spending ability, and the impacts of that on demanded wages - is pretty darn relevant to what you're saying. If you're paying an extra 10% (or whatever) on everything you buy, then you're going to adjust your wage expectations accordingly. > We need people to do low wage jobs. If they get some wages for free, we need to pay them more to do the jobs. Good. We should be paying workers a lot more than they're currently getting. The American (and for that matter, global) working class has been chronically shafted under capitalism for centuries now; God forbid we get shafted a little bit less. > If we pay them more, then we need to raise prices on the goods in order to not go bankrupt. Or the management could take a pay cut. I have very little sympathy for the "but what about our profits?" argument when C-level execs of even small businesses are skimming enough money on the output of our labor to be able to afford multi-million dollar homes and fancy cars. > It's just a naive thing to focus on this founder idea. Doesn't seem any more naïve than the idea that workers will somehow manage to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" in a socioeconomic system deliberately designed to ensure we're never able to accumulate enough capital to do so (even at all, let alone without significantly impacting our physical and mental health in the process). Entrepreneurship currently skews hard toward those who already have money. That's a problem which in and of itself needs solved in order for a society to actually have any semblance of that "equality of opportunity" to which "laissez-faire" capitalists pay lip service; that maximizing the ability for working class people to start their own businesses (be it as individuals or cooperatively with others) happens to also at least partially alleviate outsourcing-induced job loss is a nice side benefit.