4 ms·

> 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 guarantee

> 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?
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > working and gaining an income will always improve your standard of living Do you mean now? Or under UBI? Or under UBI plus the necessary changes in the tax code to make sure adding more income never puts you in a higher tax bracket that reduces your actual take home income? Even the last wouldn't necessarily make your claim true, since working has costs as well as benefits--paying for your daily commute, for example. > We can even potentially reduce or eliminate minimum wage This would be an obvious thing to do if UBI existed, but nobody, to my knowledge, is proposing it, and it would be politically very difficult to achieve even with UBI. Nobody wants to be the one who takes away any perceived benefit. > an economic future where there are no reasonable opportunities for a growing number of people To the extent this is an actual problem, the way to fix it is not UBI, but removing the massive number of government regulations that make it extremely difficult to start a small business and be competitive. The idea that we are running out of actual opportunities for productive work--that is, opportunities for making positive sum trades that are not being made now because nobody has yet started the necessary business to enable them--is laughable. Human wants are limitless. But the most cost effective ways to satisfy particular wants do change, and people's expectations of job opportunities do have to change with them. > What will, for example, ride sharing, food delivery drivers, and truck drivers do when self-driving vehicles eliminate the need for them? What happened to all the horse carriage drivers, grooms, stable hands, etc., etc. when the automobile made horse transport obsolete? The answer, of course, is that they went and found different jobs. Some of them found jobs in automobile factories, or became gas station attendants, or worked on road paving crews. But others went to work for new businesses, or started new businesses, doing things that hadn't existed at all before, because there were no people available to do them. In other words, your implicit mental model, which is that there are a fixed number of jobs and once automation takes some away, no others arise to replace them, is simply wrong. > 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? Historically, that has always been what happens when a technology change makes a large pool of people available for new work, so yes. The only thing that might put a spoke in the wheel is government regulations preventing people from starting new businesses doing new things to employ those people. See above.
    - 3y ago

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?
- pdonis 3y ago
  > working and gaining an income will always improve your standard of living Do you mean now? Or under UBI? Or under UBI plus the necessary changes in the tax code to make sure adding more income never puts you in a higher tax bracket that reduces your actual take home income? Even the last wouldn't necessarily make your claim true, since working has costs as well as benefits--paying for your daily commute, for example. > We can even potentially reduce or eliminate minimum wage This would be an obvious thing to do if UBI existed, but nobody, to my knowledge, is proposing it, and it would be politically very difficult to achieve even with UBI. Nobody wants to be the one who takes away any perceived benefit. > an economic future where there are no reasonable opportunities for a growing number of people To the extent this is an actual problem, the way to fix it is not UBI, but removing the massive number of government regulations that make it extremely difficult to start a small business and be competitive. The idea that we are running out of actual opportunities for productive work--that is, opportunities for making positive sum trades that are not being made now because nobody has yet started the necessary business to enable them--is laughable. Human wants are limitless. But the most cost effective ways to satisfy particular wants do change, and people's expectations of job opportunities do have to change with them. > What will, for example, ride sharing, food delivery drivers, and truck drivers do when self-driving vehicles eliminate the need for them? What happened to all the horse carriage drivers, grooms, stable hands, etc., etc. when the automobile made horse transport obsolete? The answer, of course, is that they went and found different jobs. Some of them found jobs in automobile factories, or became gas station attendants, or worked on road paving crews. But others went to work for new businesses, or started new businesses, doing things that hadn't existed at all before, because there were no people available to do them. In other words, your implicit mental model, which is that there are a fixed number of jobs and once automation takes some away, no others arise to replace them, is simply wrong. > 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? Historically, that has always been what happens when a technology change makes a large pool of people available for new work, so yes. The only thing that might put a spoke in the wheel is government regulations preventing people from starting new businesses doing new things to employ those people. See above.
  - 3y ago