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For those fortunate enough to have made absurd amounts of money, think of what you did when you had it. You kept making for whole different reasons. You kept ma
by t-writescode 1y ago
For those fortunate enough to have made absurd amounts of money, think of what you did when you had it. You kept making for whole different reasons. You kept making, kept doing.
The only thing that stops is tolerance of actual garbage bosses, abusive companies and saying “yes” to decisions that require you to be immoral.
- bombcar 1y agoWell, 25% stopped apparently. Which is somewhat telling. If you gave me a $basicIncome raise I’d keep working; but I’d appreciate the cash. If you guaranteed $basicIncome for life I’d restructure my life around that, and likely FIRE.
- t-writescode 1y agoWhat would you do in your retirement? Loaf? Volunteer? Make art? Two of those are “work”
- atomicnumber3 1y agoHe's do the only thing we're definitely here to do. Live.
- appreciatorBus 1y agoThere are plenty of ways to volunteer or do art that are indistinguishable from loafing. Even if you work hard at volunteering or art, if the result isn't useful to others, at some point we will start wondering who is going to grow food and do plumbing while everyone is volunteering & arting.
- throaway955 1y agopresumably people who don't like volunteering and arting, and do like working with their hands on concrete problems that directly affect peoples lives
- ghiculescu 1y agoYou think there would be lots of volunteer garbage collectors?
- throaway955 1y ago...pay them to do it? gp said "plumbing" not "the worst jobs we couldn't get people to do for free."
- ghiculescu 1y agoSo basically we are going to pay people to not work, and then pay them even more to still work.
- throaway955 1y agodo you have some kind of evidence that enacting a ubi, which comes with absolutely no condition of "not working," will stop a majority of people from taking paid work and making more money? Do we need 100% of the population to work in order to fill vital positions? I don't think so.
- ghiculescu 1y agoYeah, the article we are commenting on + most comments here are the evidence
- throaway955 1y agoThe article said 3/4 of people kept working, a significant portion of the 1/4 went back to school, and a hell of a a lot of people are in this comment section saying they would never stop working even with UBI.
- wat10000 1y agoExactly. Instead of a floor of $0 and you earn more than that by working, you have a floor of $1,000/month or whatever, and you earn more than that by working. The idea is to provide a cushion, not replace wages.
- pxc 1y ago> Well, 25% stopped apparently. Which is somewhat telling. The report also says that half of those who stopped working went back to school! So that's no more than 13% who really became "idle". And there are also questions we should ask about that group, like their age composition, for instance. If of the 13% that quit working without returning to education or training, many of them were older people, wouldn't that meaningfully change the picture as well?
- dumbledoren 1y agoAside from half of those who stopped working going back to school, there is a simple reason why a lot of people will stop for a while when universal income or a similar scheme first starts: People are burned out. They are overworked. Over-stressed. Most of them were just hurled into careers by the system without much choice because they had to make a living. Most of them didnt even have time to think about their choices. A majority has spent decades struggling for survival amidst financial insecurity. When universal income starts for the first time, all of these people will stop for a while and start revising their lives. Something which they needed to do way before, but were not allowed by the system. Its natural. When they get over the burnout and do their reflection, they will go active again. We see this in the case of the privileged minority who are able to retire early or take sabbaticals. They rest and do random stuff for a while, then they go back to doing something they want to do. Especially in tech, that has been the case. People dont like staying idle for long.
- ropable 1y agoI bet you wouldn't, at least not until your 70s. Here's my anecdote-based argument to the contrary: every single recent retiree I know (having $basicIncome as a pension) has taken 6-12 months off work and then started working again (where they are physically capable of doing so). The reasons vary from necessity, boredom or wanting to feel "useful". This seems to drop off sharply the mid-70s. I'm not saying that working is hardwired in humans, but it seems to be a strong part of our sense of self-worth.
- david-gpu 1y ago> For those fortunate enough to have made absurd amounts of money, think of what you did when you had it. I quit my job. A handful of my coworkers did the same. Most people, when given the chance to stop working, they stop. Just look at pensioners, including those who get a pension at 50. The vast majority simply stop working.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI retired when I thought I (barely) could financially. 57 years old is by no means young, but I have done better than my parents did in that regard. (Although I might start substitute teaching this Fall ... maybe I didn't retire after all.)
- crtified 1y agoYou quit working in the conventional, modern, hierarchical contract employment system - a very tight and specific definition of "work". But I'd be very surprised if you didn't still spend a goodly proportion of your time beavering away at endeavours that were productive to yourself or others in your family and community.
- david-gpu 1y agoThe discussion is around sustainability: when people quit paid work they no longer contribute to the very tax base that is necessary to sustain a basic income.
- CuriousSkeptic 1y agoUBI could be funded in other ways than taxes. Instead we could collect rent from all commons added to the economy as private assets.
- crtified 1y agoMost UBI proposals I've heard of are the equivalent of $5.00-7.50 per hour wage. If what you imply were true - that upon achieving that level, people simply said "goal reached" and ceased to be further productive - then the USA median hourly wage would not be $22.
- joegibbs 1y agoThat's because the kinds of people who make those huge amounts of money usually have that ambition and lack of satisfaction. But what about the parts of society that aren't go-getting yuppie strivers? There is a vast majority of people who never consider grinding leetcode to get a job at Jane Street so that they can later pivot to B2B SAAS for timeseries data.
- t-writescode 1y agoHonestly, I think you think too little of people. A *lot* of people love to invent, create, explore, dream, participate and so on. I would argue the vast, vast majority. People I know grow crops, make food, paint, draw, build worlds, write stories, create programs and so on. And these are people from every area in life.
- joegibbs 1y agoI don't deny that people love to do creative things like that. But society can't survive off creatives and gardeners and the other fun things. Those activities are nice for the people who do them but they don't help support the rest of the population - we need truckers, aged care workers, farmers, cashiers.
- CuriousSkeptic 1y ago> aged care workers Just picking out this one out of curiosity, not arguing the broader point. In a world where people have more freedom on what to spend their energy and time on I would expect some things to return to the realm of unpaid labour. Child care, mentoring, care for the elder, local community contributions. Probably not replacing the demand entirely, but surely some shifts in supply and demand would be observed.
- apparent 1y agoThere's a strong selection bias at play. People who have made absurd amounts of money are disproportionately likely to be highly-motivated people.