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My father and I fight about this a lot. His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. I understand his complaint, but the empi

My father and I fight about this a lot. His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. I understand his complaint, but the empirical evidence for it is that, when welfare was tied to having children, people apparently gamed the system by using less money on their kids than the welfare provided. This seems like it's probably most american's understanding of a welfare system, and my father is totally unwilling to consider that this problem of incentives can be remedied, though he is reasonably easy to convince of the value of giving employees negotiating power to quit their jobs and be able to survive. For me this is where the entire argument lies. A basic income (that does not depend on children) asserts the right to subsist without a job. Employment can offer you a better life, but it should not be able to offer you life itself. An employer that wields that carrot also wields that stick, and can exploit the difference to incredible social harm.

hellojesus 3y ago
[flagged]
tenebrisalietum 3y ago
> His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. So your father's take is either A) false, or B) what people with money are doing is not work, and is therefore bad.
- gruez 3y ago
  >There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. The exception doesn't prove the rule. Just because some really driven people are willing to be a CEO when they have far more money than they could ever need, doesn't mean that the average burger flipper is going to continue working at mcdonalds if his living expenses were fully paid by the government.
  - shuntress 3y ago
    > when they have far more money than they could ever need There is a kind of brain rot that can set in on wealthy people that makes them see their net worth as their score. It's not about need or comfort. All that matters is hitting a higher score.
    - gruez 3y ago
      >It's not about need or comfort. All that matters is hitting a higher score. so basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#Self-actualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#...?
      - shuntress 3y ago
        You linked to specifically to the Self-actualization section which, critically, includes this line: "To understand this level of need, a person must not only succeed in the previous needs but master them" I would say it is more like a twisted perversion of the hierarchy of needs where all levels are broken down to a single abstraction: Net worth = Score
        gruez 3y ago
        What makes you think all Bezos thinks "Net worth = Score"? What if he simply wants to build the best e-commerence/cloud conglomerate there is, and that happens to coincide with amazon share prices going up? After all, the better job he does at running amazon, the more investors will value it.
        shuntress 3y ago
        Maybe he doesn't. I have no way to know how he actually thinks. My point is that once a person becomes that wealthy, the practical value of a dollar becomes essentially meaningless to them. Its the idea that more wealth is automatically better. If they just make Amazon more profitable it will be better.
- mypastself 3y ago
  Couldn’t it be the case that it’s much harder for poor people to find employment they enjoy as much as CEOs enjoy theirs? Or that ultra-rich CEOs are able to reach that status in part because their work ethics is an extreme outlier?
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    Of course. The only reason people work is because the expected value of their work maximizes their utility curve when compared to the opportunity costs. I go to work because I need money to live. I find employment by maximizing the pay I'm able to get conditional om my skillset and preferred job functions. But I don't see why people with lower skillsets or utility curves that weigh leisure more highly than work activities should be allowed to leech off the productive capacities of others.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
      > But I don't see why people with lower skillsets or utility curves that weigh leisure more highly than work activities should be allowed to leech off the productive capacities of others. This is a good example of a "thought-terminating cliché"[0]. In this case, the statement assumes its own veracity, which makes it difficult to respond to in a discussion. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...
      - gruez 3y ago
        Ironically by invoking "thought-terminating cliché", you are partaking in the very offense you accuse the parent of. Is it fair to redistribute wealth from people who are working, to give it to people who don't? There's plausible arguments for both sides, but rather than trying to argue for why we should, you drop a link to some fallacy on wikipedia and call it a day.
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
        > Is it fair to redistribute wealth from people who are working, to give it to people who don't? I kinda think you missed the point. This is actually just another one of those clichés. Surely you can see how this sort of communication doesn't promote a healthy discussion. Is there an argument that you want to make or are you just going to demand that someone argue against your cliché?
- 4death4 3y ago
  The issue with this argument is that low wages are basically marginal. E.g. a low wage earner could get $100 dollars UBI or $200 dollars working a job. A CEO, on the other hand, could get $100 UBI or 11 million working a job. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely getting out of bed for the extra $10,999,900. I might not get out of bed for the extra $100, however.
  - shuntress 3y ago
    This is an indication that there is some kind of either: 1) artificial suppression of the value of the low wage job 2) artificial inflation of the value of the CEO's job or, more likely: 3) Both.
- kulahan 3y ago
  If I knew that I'd never be out on the streets no matter how bad things got, because I at least have the money to pay rent and buy food, there's no chance I'm working anything but BS jobs for random spending money. p=1, but still, I doubt I'm that unique. My job is difficult and takes a lot of work to get the skills necessary to do it. Who's going to take over my job? Probably nobody, but that's just my (extremely uneducated) guess.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > If I knew that I'd never be out on the streets no matter how bad things got, because I at least have the money to pay rent and buy food, there's no chance I'm working anything but BS jobs for random spending money. p=1, but still, I doubt I'm that unique. You can already do that. Are you claiming that the only reason you have your current job is to avoid the remote possibility of being out on the streets?
    - gruez 3y ago
      >Are you claiming that the only reason you have your current job is to avoid the remote possibility of being out on the streets? Being "out on the streets" because you don't have a job is hardly a "remote possibility". It's a virtual certainly unless you have a massive cash hoard built up.
      - lapcat 3y ago
        > Being "out on the streets" because you don't have a job is hardly a "remote possibility". It's a virtual certainly unless you have a massive cash hoard built up. It's not a virtual certainty. Not even close. The rate of homelessness in the US in 2022 was 0.18%. https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/ https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless... Few people have a "massive cash hoard" built up, yet lots of people lose their jobs. And if you're willing to work "BS jobs for random spending money", as the OP said, then you probably won't remain unemployed for long.
        3y ago
- mathgradthrow 3y ago
  As a UBI proponent, I will offer this in rebuttal. If you give labor additional negotiating power over capital, (the two coarsely defined players in this game) you will see shortages, and capital will lose a lot of value. This includes the middle class, who saved up peanuts and now have to pay people real money to do work. Those people will genuinely get screwed. Hyperinflation is a real possibility, and UBI needs to be tuned pretty tightly to prevent it.
dfxm12 3y ago
People work in Alaska. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ An employer that wields that carrot also wields that stick, and can exploit the difference to incredible social harm. It is especially cruel that in the US, so many benefits are tied to employment. It means employers have this huge power over workers and also makes sure that it is almost impossible for some workers to invest the time and money in themselves required to gain the skills needed for better employment opportunities.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  > It is especially cruel that in the US, so many benefits are tied to employment. And so many taxes tied to employment. Not just US, but pretty much everywhere. Why discourage the most the thing you want people to do?
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    I'll admit it is arguable that there might be better ways to raise tax revenue than we currently are, but has anyone thought about maybe not entering the workforce because of income tax?
    - biomcgary 3y ago
      Not sure if this was the GPs point, but the US taxes wages (i.e., work) in addition to income, so every dollar spent on work gets more taken out of it than every other dollar. Not entering the part-time, entrepreneurial workforce due to self-employment taxes is absolutely a thing because the bite taken out is quite large. Wage taxes absolutely need to go, but they are tied to Social Security / Medicare, so the elite in both parties are unwilling to touch them, albeit for different reasons.
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      Yes. I DIY tons of stuff, instead of working more hours in my core competency, because the economics of hiring it out are all screwed up. Sometimes it’s ludicrous, why the hell am I, a desk jockey, doing a brake job? Why is it more cost effective to build a retaining wall myself, with basic tools, rather than working extra hours and paying someone that does it as a career? (Btw, that retaining wall is going to last 100years). Income tax is a form of overhead. Not just changing the economics of “saving a dollar is like making 2 dollars”, but ups the price of things. A corporation, mainly paying taxes on its profits, not all revenue, would never have this magnitude of dilemma between outsourcing vs in-house. This is why I prefer shifts towards taxing destruction (like carbon taxes, stranded capital) instead of taxing production.
badpun 3y ago
> Employment can offer you a better life Better in material terms, but worse in other metrics. Full time employment means you barely have any time or energy for your life outside of work. I really doubt a lot of people would chose to be subjected to that, just to have a bigger house or to be able to go for expensive vacation. I'm guessing much more people would be willing to go part-time, but that is a not very efficient in many industries.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. Even if I were to concede his first point (which I'm about 50% willing to do - I accept that there are actually "lazy" people in the world who will lack any intrinsic motivation to do stuff), that doesn't mean that his implication - it will be bad - follows. When considering social policy, it is almost always going to have some good effects and some bad effects. So what we need to ask is not "is it good or bad that some people will not work if we give people money?" but rather "does the good from giving out the money outweigh the bad?" I think that the answer is unequivocally yes. Your dad might disagree, but he'd have to explain why the bad is bigger/worse than the good.

hellojesus 3y ago

[flagged]

tenebrisalietum 3y ago

> His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. So your father's take is either A) false, or B) what people with money are doing is not work, and is therefore bad.

gruez 3y ago
>There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. The exception doesn't prove the rule. Just because some really driven people are willing to be a CEO when they have far more money than they could ever need, doesn't mean that the average burger flipper is going to continue working at mcdonalds if his living expenses were fully paid by the government.
- shuntress 3y ago
  > when they have far more money than they could ever need There is a kind of brain rot that can set in on wealthy people that makes them see their net worth as their score. It's not about need or comfort. All that matters is hitting a higher score.
  - gruez 3y ago
    >It's not about need or comfort. All that matters is hitting a higher score. so basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#Self-actualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#...?
    - shuntress 3y ago
      You linked to specifically to the Self-actualization section which, critically, includes this line: "To understand this level of need, a person must not only succeed in the previous needs but master them" I would say it is more like a twisted perversion of the hierarchy of needs where all levels are broken down to a single abstraction: Net worth = Score
      - gruez 3y ago
        What makes you think all Bezos thinks "Net worth = Score"? What if he simply wants to build the best e-commerence/cloud conglomerate there is, and that happens to coincide with amazon share prices going up? After all, the better job he does at running amazon, the more investors will value it.
        shuntress 3y ago
        Maybe he doesn't. I have no way to know how he actually thinks. My point is that once a person becomes that wealthy, the practical value of a dollar becomes essentially meaningless to them. Its the idea that more wealth is automatically better. If they just make Amazon more profitable it will be better.
mypastself 3y ago
Couldn’t it be the case that it’s much harder for poor people to find employment they enjoy as much as CEOs enjoy theirs? Or that ultra-rich CEOs are able to reach that status in part because their work ethics is an extreme outlier?
- hellojesus 3y ago
  Of course. The only reason people work is because the expected value of their work maximizes their utility curve when compared to the opportunity costs. I go to work because I need money to live. I find employment by maximizing the pay I'm able to get conditional om my skillset and preferred job functions. But I don't see why people with lower skillsets or utility curves that weigh leisure more highly than work activities should be allowed to leech off the productive capacities of others.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    > But I don't see why people with lower skillsets or utility curves that weigh leisure more highly than work activities should be allowed to leech off the productive capacities of others. This is a good example of a "thought-terminating cliché"[0]. In this case, the statement assumes its own veracity, which makes it difficult to respond to in a discussion. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...
    - gruez 3y ago
      Ironically by invoking "thought-terminating cliché", you are partaking in the very offense you accuse the parent of. Is it fair to redistribute wealth from people who are working, to give it to people who don't? There's plausible arguments for both sides, but rather than trying to argue for why we should, you drop a link to some fallacy on wikipedia and call it a day.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
        > Is it fair to redistribute wealth from people who are working, to give it to people who don't? I kinda think you missed the point. This is actually just another one of those clichés. Surely you can see how this sort of communication doesn't promote a healthy discussion. Is there an argument that you want to make or are you just going to demand that someone argue against your cliché?
4death4 3y ago
The issue with this argument is that low wages are basically marginal. E.g. a low wage earner could get $100 dollars UBI or $200 dollars working a job. A CEO, on the other hand, could get $100 UBI or 11 million working a job. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely getting out of bed for the extra $10,999,900. I might not get out of bed for the extra $100, however.
- shuntress 3y ago
  This is an indication that there is some kind of either: 1) artificial suppression of the value of the low wage job 2) artificial inflation of the value of the CEO's job or, more likely: 3) Both.
kulahan 3y ago
If I knew that I'd never be out on the streets no matter how bad things got, because I at least have the money to pay rent and buy food, there's no chance I'm working anything but BS jobs for random spending money. p=1, but still, I doubt I'm that unique. My job is difficult and takes a lot of work to get the skills necessary to do it. Who's going to take over my job? Probably nobody, but that's just my (extremely uneducated) guess.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > If I knew that I'd never be out on the streets no matter how bad things got, because I at least have the money to pay rent and buy food, there's no chance I'm working anything but BS jobs for random spending money. p=1, but still, I doubt I'm that unique. You can already do that. Are you claiming that the only reason you have your current job is to avoid the remote possibility of being out on the streets?
  - gruez 3y ago
    >Are you claiming that the only reason you have your current job is to avoid the remote possibility of being out on the streets? Being "out on the streets" because you don't have a job is hardly a "remote possibility". It's a virtual certainly unless you have a massive cash hoard built up.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > Being "out on the streets" because you don't have a job is hardly a "remote possibility". It's a virtual certainly unless you have a massive cash hoard built up. It's not a virtual certainty. Not even close. The rate of homelessness in the US in 2022 was 0.18%. https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/ https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless... Few people have a "massive cash hoard" built up, yet lots of people lose their jobs. And if you're willing to work "BS jobs for random spending money", as the OP said, then you probably won't remain unemployed for long.
      - 3y ago
mathgradthrow 3y ago
As a UBI proponent, I will offer this in rebuttal. If you give labor additional negotiating power over capital, (the two coarsely defined players in this game) you will see shortages, and capital will lose a lot of value. This includes the middle class, who saved up peanuts and now have to pay people real money to do work. Those people will genuinely get screwed. Hyperinflation is a real possibility, and UBI needs to be tuned pretty tightly to prevent it.

dfxm12 3y ago

People work in Alaska. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ An employer that wields that carrot also wields that stick, and can exploit the difference to incredible social harm. It is especially cruel that in the US, so many benefits are tied to employment. It means employers have this huge power over workers and also makes sure that it is almost impossible for some workers to invest the time and money in themselves required to gain the skills needed for better employment opportunities.

Scoundreller 3y ago
> It is especially cruel that in the US, so many benefits are tied to employment. And so many taxes tied to employment. Not just US, but pretty much everywhere. Why discourage the most the thing you want people to do?
- dfxm12 3y ago
  I'll admit it is arguable that there might be better ways to raise tax revenue than we currently are, but has anyone thought about maybe not entering the workforce because of income tax?
  - biomcgary 3y ago
    Not sure if this was the GPs point, but the US taxes wages (i.e., work) in addition to income, so every dollar spent on work gets more taken out of it than every other dollar. Not entering the part-time, entrepreneurial workforce due to self-employment taxes is absolutely a thing because the bite taken out is quite large. Wage taxes absolutely need to go, but they are tied to Social Security / Medicare, so the elite in both parties are unwilling to touch them, albeit for different reasons.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Yes. I DIY tons of stuff, instead of working more hours in my core competency, because the economics of hiring it out are all screwed up. Sometimes it’s ludicrous, why the hell am I, a desk jockey, doing a brake job? Why is it more cost effective to build a retaining wall myself, with basic tools, rather than working extra hours and paying someone that does it as a career? (Btw, that retaining wall is going to last 100years). Income tax is a form of overhead. Not just changing the economics of “saving a dollar is like making 2 dollars”, but ups the price of things. A corporation, mainly paying taxes on its profits, not all revenue, would never have this magnitude of dilemma between outsourcing vs in-house. This is why I prefer shifts towards taxing destruction (like carbon taxes, stranded capital) instead of taxing production.

badpun 3y ago

> Employment can offer you a better life Better in material terms, but worse in other metrics. Full time employment means you barely have any time or energy for your life outside of work. I really doubt a lot of people would chose to be subjected to that, just to have a bigger house or to be able to go for expensive vacation. I'm guessing much more people would be willing to go part-time, but that is a not very efficient in many industries.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. Even if I were to concede his first point (which I'm about 50% willing to do - I accept that there are actually "lazy" people in the world who will lack any intrinsic motivation to do stuff), that doesn't mean that his implication - it will be bad - follows. When considering social policy, it is almost always going to have some good effects and some bad effects. So what we need to ask is not "is it good or bad that some people will not work if we give people money?" but rather "does the good from giving out the money outweigh the bad?" I think that the answer is unequivocally yes. Your dad might disagree, but he'd have to explain why the bad is bigger/worse than the good.