3 ms·

Money, money, money, and money. We need it to survive. Until people's basic needs are taken care of for them, they need to do what they can to live.

ceejayoz 7mo ago
Again, we're talking about retirees, homemakers, college students, disabled, etc. here.
throwaway173738 7mo ago
Why not simply pay the homemakers? Why is it so important that everyone produce economic output at the widget factory? Allow me to translate into a language you can understand: The people who are all “unemployed” are actually performing valuable services like maintaining the future labor pool, learning how to become skilled workers, and so on. These people should not have a second job, they should be paid for the valuable services they’re providing.
- nradov 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 7mo ago
    Huh. You used to be concerned with declining birth rates. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11000823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11000823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38735888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38735888
    - Hikikomori 7mo ago
      Not if it costs something.
- mitthrowaway2 7mo ago
  IMO, basic income for parents is absolutely a policy that Japan should enact. And the question of how much the payment should be has a straightforward answer: adjust until the birth rate reaches replacement. If the payment ends up high enough that some mothers or fathers opt to leave the labor force to focus on raising their kids, then so be it; that's probably healthier for society in the long term. It would be expensive, yes, but cheaper than the alternatives. And anyway, Japan's stagnant economy would likely benefit from the boost to consumer demand.
  - daedrdev 7mo ago
    There is no guarantee people with no wants will have kids, in fact I expect the opposite
    - mitthrowaway2 7mo ago
      Those people can work for their income then; the policy I was discussing only relates to the government paying parents an income, ideally on a per-child basis (up to some maximum, maybe four; you need to have some people having bigger families to balance out the ones who don't have any children at all, but you also don't want people farming kids for money).
fluoridation 7mo ago
You didn't answer the question, you answered a different question: "why would someone want to work, just in general?" The question that was posed was, why would someone who has already chosen to retire, or who is already fully occupied, or who is sick, want to work?
Lerc 7mo ago
Humans are older than money, so evidently we don't need it to survive, but there is more to existence than mere survival. I agree that people's basic needs to be taken care of, but I think that is an issue that needs to happen because of automation. It needs to happen because it is simply the right thing to do. I would go as fas as saying It shouldn't just be basic needs. Society should be aiming to provide the entire hierarchy of needs for everyone. I think having employment delivers some of the higher needs to a subset of people, but it is a privileged few. A huge number work just to provide the basic needs. Advocating using the advances in automation to raise everybody up is what we need. Instead we seem to be maintaining a system that gives a few what we want and the rest of us are too busy with the survival part to influence that change.
- andsoitis 7mo ago
  > Society should be aiming to provide the entire hierarchy of needs for everyone. I don’t know. Society should provide the framework within which people can achieve their needs (and wants), but not the needs and wants themselves directly. Otherwise you put an artificial cap on human growth and inefficient allocation of resources.
  - Lerc 7mo ago
    >Otherwise you put an artificial cap on human growth and inefficient allocation of resources. That is not how the hierarchy of needs works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs Removing the cap on growth is pretty much baked in.
- samus 7mo ago
  Money is a tool (maybe not the best) to make an economy with division of labor work. It's not required and probably also doesn't work in societies where everybody knows everybody else and can make sure that the right things are done and nobody slacks off.

ceejayoz 7mo ago

Again, we're talking about retirees, homemakers, college students, disabled, etc. here.

throwaway173738 7mo ago

Why not simply pay the homemakers? Why is it so important that everyone produce economic output at the widget factory? Allow me to translate into a language you can understand: The people who are all “unemployed” are actually performing valuable services like maintaining the future labor pool, learning how to become skilled workers, and so on. These people should not have a second job, they should be paid for the valuable services they’re providing.

nradov 7mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  Huh. You used to be concerned with declining birth rates. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11000823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11000823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38735888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38735888
  - Hikikomori 7mo ago
    Not if it costs something.
mitthrowaway2 7mo ago
IMO, basic income for parents is absolutely a policy that Japan should enact. And the question of how much the payment should be has a straightforward answer: adjust until the birth rate reaches replacement. If the payment ends up high enough that some mothers or fathers opt to leave the labor force to focus on raising their kids, then so be it; that's probably healthier for society in the long term. It would be expensive, yes, but cheaper than the alternatives. And anyway, Japan's stagnant economy would likely benefit from the boost to consumer demand.
- daedrdev 7mo ago
  There is no guarantee people with no wants will have kids, in fact I expect the opposite
  - mitthrowaway2 7mo ago
    Those people can work for their income then; the policy I was discussing only relates to the government paying parents an income, ideally on a per-child basis (up to some maximum, maybe four; you need to have some people having bigger families to balance out the ones who don't have any children at all, but you also don't want people farming kids for money).

fluoridation 7mo ago

You didn't answer the question, you answered a different question: "why would someone want to work, just in general?" The question that was posed was, why would someone who has already chosen to retire, or who is already fully occupied, or who is sick, want to work?

Lerc 7mo ago

Humans are older than money, so evidently we don't need it to survive, but there is more to existence than mere survival. I agree that people's basic needs to be taken care of, but I think that is an issue that needs to happen because of automation. It needs to happen because it is simply the right thing to do. I would go as fas as saying It shouldn't just be basic needs. Society should be aiming to provide the entire hierarchy of needs for everyone. I think having employment delivers some of the higher needs to a subset of people, but it is a privileged few. A huge number work just to provide the basic needs. Advocating using the advances in automation to raise everybody up is what we need. Instead we seem to be maintaining a system that gives a few what we want and the rest of us are too busy with the survival part to influence that change.

andsoitis 7mo ago
> Society should be aiming to provide the entire hierarchy of needs for everyone. I don’t know. Society should provide the framework within which people can achieve their needs (and wants), but not the needs and wants themselves directly. Otherwise you put an artificial cap on human growth and inefficient allocation of resources.
- Lerc 7mo ago
  >Otherwise you put an artificial cap on human growth and inefficient allocation of resources. That is not how the hierarchy of needs works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs Removing the cap on growth is pretty much baked in.
samus 7mo ago
Money is a tool (maybe not the best) to make an economy with division of labor work. It's not required and probably also doesn't work in societies where everybody knows everybody else and can make sure that the right things are done and nobody slacks off.