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UBI is a practical solution. Education and reproductive changes don’t alter the reality that you can spend years working on developing skills in an industry th

UBI is a practical solution. Education and reproductive changes don’t alter the reality that you can spend years working on developing skills in an industry that rapidly disappears due to technological upheaval. It also doesn’t change the fact that you can’t remedy a plummeting number of jobs for low-educated people by educating everyone. Will pilots be necessary in ten years? Twenty? Fifty? What do we do about the fact that we need them now, but we won’t in an unpredictable amount of time? Will truck drivers be necessary in ten years? Twenty? Fifty? Do you think they will all be amenable to retraining as full-stack developers and financial analysts? Do you think we could even absorb that number of people in other industries, even if we could retrain everyone? And what happens when the jobs they retrained for disappear in five or ten years?

exabrial 3y ago
Sure but who pays for it? Who decides who gets to be rich?
- stouset 3y ago
  Taxes pay for it, just like they pay for existing benefits schemes. In theory, we could eliminate many of the means-tested approaches we currently use, which impose significant overhead costs from the means-testing. Do those taxes come primarily from industries which are profiting from disrupted heavily labor markets? Do they come from general income taxes, or corporate taxes, or something else? All of these are interesting discussions to have, but "yes but who pays for it" isn't an argument not to do it. And I genuinely have no idea what you're even getting at with your second question. Nobody? The market? What does UBI have to do with individuals becoming rich?
pdonis 3y ago
> UBI is a practical solution. No, it isn't. All of the issues you describe are business realities; they are facts of life that everyone has to deal with. You can't make those issues go away by guaranteeing everyone an income, because those issues are issues of production, not consumption. Guaranteeing everyone an income doesn't magically enable us to predict the future or magically retrain people instantly for new jobs when old ones become obsolete. It doesn't magically get the right goods and services produced for everyone's income to be spent on. In other words, whether we like it or not, we are all exposed to the risks you describe, and UBI does not magically un-expose us to them. The only really practical way of dealing with those risks is for everyone to take a share of them; that means everyone has to be responsible for their own future planning, for being aware of the extent to which their current skills and jobs are becoming obsolete, and to plan their future accordingly. In other words, every mature adult needs to be able to act like a mature adult and take responsibility for their own lives. There is no magical solution that frees anyone from the need to do that.
- stouset 3y ago
  > All of the issues you describe are business realities; they are facts of life that everyone has to deal with. You can't make those issues go away by guaranteeing everyone an income, because those issues are issues of production, not consumption. I believe you’ve thoroughly missed the point. UBI does not, as you note, “magically enable us to predict the future or magically retrain people instantly for new jobs when old ones become obsolete”. What it does do—in principle—is allow the people who are impacted by structurally decreasing job opportunities and increasing turmoil in the job market to live in something other than destitution. And it does so without many of the downsides of means-tested programs, such as benefits cliffs, negative incentive structures, and operational overhead.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > allow the people who are impacted by structurally decreasing job opportunities and increasing turmoil in the job market to live in something other than destitution Even if I accept your description of the problem for the sake of argument (I actually don't think you're correctly describing the actual facts), why is universal basic income needed for this? And how does it avoid the obvious problem of increasing these same problems by reducing people's incentive to produce goods and services?
    - stouset 3y ago
      > …why is universal basic income needed for this? And how does it avoid the obvious problem of increasing these same problems by reducing people's incentive to produce goods and services? For the simple fact that working and gaining an income will always improve your standard of living, unlike means-tested programs today with benefits cliffs and perverse incentives. We can even potentially reduce or eliminate minimum wage, since basic survival is no longer contingent upon working a job that pays enough. Additionally, the problems foreseen aren’t a result of a lack of population willing to produce goods and/or services. They’re from an economic future where there are no reasonable opportunities for a growing number of people. What will, for example, ride sharing, food delivery drivers, and truck drivers do when self-driving vehicles eliminate the need for them? Do you believe we have (or will have) jobs to employ the ten-plus million who will be put out of work in the coming decade or two?

exabrial 3y ago

Sure but who pays for it? Who decides who gets to be rich?

stouset 3y ago
Taxes pay for it, just like they pay for existing benefits schemes. In theory, we could eliminate many of the means-tested approaches we currently use, which impose significant overhead costs from the means-testing. Do those taxes come primarily from industries which are profiting from disrupted heavily labor markets? Do they come from general income taxes, or corporate taxes, or something else? All of these are interesting discussions to have, but "yes but who pays for it" isn't an argument not to do it. And I genuinely have no idea what you're even getting at with your second question. Nobody? The market? What does UBI have to do with individuals becoming rich?

pdonis 3y ago

> UBI is a practical solution. No, it isn't. All of the issues you describe are business realities; they are facts of life that everyone has to deal with. You can't make those issues go away by guaranteeing everyone an income, because those issues are issues of production, not consumption. Guaranteeing everyone an income doesn't magically enable us to predict the future or magically retrain people instantly for new jobs when old ones become obsolete. It doesn't magically get the right goods and services produced for everyone's income to be spent on. In other words, whether we like it or not, we are all exposed to the risks you describe, and UBI does not magically un-expose us to them. The only really practical way of dealing with those risks is for everyone to take a share of them; that means everyone has to be responsible for their own future planning, for being aware of the extent to which their current skills and jobs are becoming obsolete, and to plan their future accordingly. In other words, every mature adult needs to be able to act like a mature adult and take responsibility for their own lives. There is no magical solution that frees anyone from the need to do that.

stouset 3y ago
> All of the issues you describe are business realities; they are facts of life that everyone has to deal with. You can't make those issues go away by guaranteeing everyone an income, because those issues are issues of production, not consumption. I believe you’ve thoroughly missed the point. UBI does not, as you note, “magically enable us to predict the future or magically retrain people instantly for new jobs when old ones become obsolete”. What it does do—in principle—is allow the people who are impacted by structurally decreasing job opportunities and increasing turmoil in the job market to live in something other than destitution. And it does so without many of the downsides of means-tested programs, such as benefits cliffs, negative incentive structures, and operational overhead.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > allow the people who are impacted by structurally decreasing job opportunities and increasing turmoil in the job market to live in something other than destitution Even if I accept your description of the problem for the sake of argument (I actually don't think you're correctly describing the actual facts), why is universal basic income needed for this? And how does it avoid the obvious problem of increasing these same problems by reducing people's incentive to produce goods and services?
  - stouset 3y ago
    > …why is universal basic income needed for this? And how does it avoid the obvious problem of increasing these same problems by reducing people's incentive to produce goods and services? For the simple fact that working and gaining an income will always improve your standard of living, unlike means-tested programs today with benefits cliffs and perverse incentives. We can even potentially reduce or eliminate minimum wage, since basic survival is no longer contingent upon working a job that pays enough. Additionally, the problems foreseen aren’t a result of a lack of population willing to produce goods and/or services. They’re from an economic future where there are no reasonable opportunities for a growing number of people. What will, for example, ride sharing, food delivery drivers, and truck drivers do when self-driving vehicles eliminate the need for them? Do you believe we have (or will have) jobs to employ the ten-plus million who will be put out of work in the coming decade or two?